


The Stray

by Kouji757



Series: The Gentlemen [1]
Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: AU, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-09
Updated: 2015-04-24
Packaged: 2018-03-22 01:59:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 32
Words: 143,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3710644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kouji757/pseuds/Kouji757
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The war against the robots had seemed pretty straight-forward at first, but then things changed - the attacks have spread to civilian areas, and when a survivor of a robot attack is found in the ruins of a city it touches off a series of events that show this change in the war is far more than just a struggle for control of Mann Co.</p><p>AU series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Woman in the Road

"If we hit one more piece of bloody robot..."

"You will shoot something, yes yes. I'm tired of hearing you complain about road debris."

Something crunched under the driver front tire as Sniper attempted - unsuccessfully - to avoid a glint of metal in the road; the entire vehicle creaked with the effort, causing Sniper to mentally curse the rusted heap of junk - this rundown "unassuming" truck was all Ms. Pauling would allow them to take on this little recovery mission they'd been sent on, and with each passing mile and errant shudder of machinery he wondered if the damn thing wouldn't just fall apart under them.

"Yeah, well I'm tired of hearing you complain about this damn mission," he retorted, casting a sour glance at his passenger.

Spy sniffed and delicately waved a cigarette-bearing hand. "You will excuse me if I am suspicious of missions with no information provided. 'Go here. Get something. You will know it when you see it.' What, then, am I supposed to know? I have received redacted documents with more information on them than this."

"Heard it, commented on it, not interested in talking about it again," Sniper grunted, gripping the steering wheel until his glove squeaked against the worn leather covering. "I'm not exactly pleased about it either, but here's how this is going to work. First, you're going to quit talking about it. Second, you're going to do your spook thing when we get there, and I'll be watching from a roof or...somewhe- you see that too, right?"

Sniper extended a single finger, hands still wrapped around the wheel; Spy glanced down, followed the finger's angle, and then narrowed his eyes at the horizon.

"Smoke, yes?"

"Yeah, smoke."

They were heading to some backwater town in the middle of nowhere - Sandstill, Sandville, something like that - and, according to the last marker they were 25 miles from their destination. There was nothing but dusty, dry, and flat land in two directions, north and south, and to the west behind them was where they'd come from. Ahead of them was a smudge of rock formation in the far distance and rising from just in front of it was a pillar of smoke.

"I believe you should, as they say, step on it," Spy finally said, carefully twisting the embers from the tip of the cigarette and storing the remainder back within his case.

\-------------------------------

"We are not going to find this courier, nor what he was carrying."

Gravel, shattered glass, and smoldering wood crunched unevenly under Sniper's boots as he picked his way around what looked to be a destroyed convenience store. "And just what tipped you off to that, genius?" he dryly replied. "The fire? The shit everywhere? The bodies?"

"Thank you for assuming I would be stupid enough to state the overly obvious," came the clipped response as the Spy disappeared into the ember-lined doorway of some sort of store - the sign was charred and unreadable. "These are the bodies of civilians," came a muffled continuance minutes later, the voice steadily becoming clearer as the man came back out. "Little old ladies, men, children. Very few robot remains - these people were not prepared for defense, and it is my guess things were over quickly. They came in, took what they were after, and left. There will be nothing to find, this carnage is proof."

"A pile of dead bodies and no bots isn't convincing enough. Might be what they wanted wasn't here, or they weren't here for a courier at all."

The Spy removed the half-smoked cigarette from earlier from his case, lit it on the doorway, and strode calmly back out of the wreckage. "Fine fine, say the courier is here somewhere, whatever he had is likely gone and I doubt we are going to find his remains."

"I'm not going to call this a wash until we've seen more than just these couple of buildings."

"This entire town is little more than a couple of buildings, Sniper."

"Maybe, but look up the street behind you, what do you see?"

With an exasperated sigh, Spy turned. "I see more destruction, people shot in the back and dead in the streets. What is your point?"

"No fire up that way, and the buildings are more intact."

"And you believe that is where we'll find this courier?"

Sniper reached up to undo the strap holding his rifle to his back and swung it easily into his hands. "Maybe. But I'm leaning more toward that being where we'll at least find signs of what we're supposed to be looking for."

"I feel this is a waste of time."

"You feel like a lot of things waste your time, probably why Miss Pauling came to me with the specifics instead of you."

Spy glowered as Sniper shouldered passed, moving up the street. "What specifics?"

Despite his attitude, the Spy did have a point - Sandville (it was Sandville, right?) seemed to be a single main street and a few side streets, with a scattering of buildings attached to them. Most of the buildings nearest the road had been hit hardest and were the ones that were collapsed inward and on fire - nothing to be found there besides wreckage and the dead.

Sniper carefully stepped over a severed arm in the road. It'd only been a handful of months since the robots produced by Gray Mann had ceased following what they'd assumed were central orders and had begun mass-producing themselves and attacking on their own, including making a total mess of Mann Co. - once the real factories and the dummy facilities the merc teams had been guarding were overrun, the robots had begun targeting seemingly random towns and warehouses across the world. The civilians - simple folk living out typical, simple (boring) lives, and even various militaries, were being outgunned and mowed down wherever the bots chose to hit.

These people here in Sandville were just regular folks, no ties at all to Mann Co., hardly even a standing police force, and nothing to justify why the robots had swarmed through here...save for this courier they'd been sent to intercept. Fat chance of that happening now, it seemed, but for the sake of the dead he felt they needed to at least thoroughly look. They'd been doing a lot of things for the sake of civilians lately, and while death didn't usually bother the Sniper the senseless, aimless, and useless death was starting to.

He had to pick his steps carefully; the road was strewn with shattered shop fronts and people, a misplaced step would mean a tumble at best and a sprained ankle at worse. Around him he could hear the sounds of things just...falling apart - ceilings and walls, plaster, stone, glass, all falling free and haphazardly piling wherever it fell, but...

There was something underlying it, something not right. A noise that was barely audible, but somehow out of place.

"Something's off-" Sniper turned as he spoke, then bit down on his words when he saw Spy was nowhere to be seen. "Bloody wonderful."

Taking a deep breath, Sniper turned back to face up the street and listened, holding his breath and slowly turning his head to try and get some sort of bearing on the noise. It was a thumping noise...something on wood, maybe? Not stone, not loud enough to be stone, so...wood, particle board, what were these shops made of? And it was coming from...ahead of him, to the left?

He peered up the road; it dead-ended in what looked like a motel that had been falling apart since before the robots had showed up, but it also seemed to be the most intact building left standing in Sandville. If there were survivors making that noise - which still seemed unlikely at this point - maybe they'd be there?

His suspicion seemed true as the thumping noise grew louder the further down the street he moved, but the sound was moving persistently to his left as he drew closer - not the motel after all, but one of the side buildings.

'I don't trust this street,' Sniper thought suddenly. He was fairly out in the open compared to how he preferred to operate, and maybe it wasn't a survivor making that noise. 'Must be having an off day...too trusting that this place is cleared out.'

Directly on his left was a narrow alleyway between two buildings, mostly intact and the closest cover he could duck into; he had just pressed his shoulder against the wall, his back to the motel, when he heard a sudden loud crash come from somewhere ahead and to the left. Whatever was making that thumping noise-

"-right into the street," he muttered, moving to carefully edge around the corner of the building for a look.

There was a woman sprawled in the street on top of the remains of a door, bloodied and panting harshly, left arm held in close against her side and swinging a hammer with the other at the robot that was flailing on top of her. Sniper took a moment to let that sink in: a robot (a Soldierbot by the looks of it) was brawling with a woman in the middle of a ruined town. Where was its weapon?

The staccato of hammer on metal was interrupted by the crack of rifle fire, and the woman was showered with metal shrapnel and wire as Sniper took the top half of the bot's head off in one shot. The woman flinched and attempted to scramble backwards from the jittering body, awkwardly dragging herself away with her only good arm and staring at the Australian with a wide-eyed look.

Eject shell. Insert new. Next target.

It was so ingrained it was like running on autopilot, and through the ruined door of what he could only assume was a hardware store came four more Soldierbots - again, none of them armed...why? - and he mowed them down in quick succession.

And then...silence, broken only by the woman's panting and the shifting of debris as she dragged herself back.

"You all right?" he asked, glance flicking to her for a moment before training back on the doorway, waiting.

There wasn't an answer, just a pained grunt and the sound of shifting glass shards. When no more bots came pouring out of the shadowed doorway, Sniper finally turned to look at her.

The limp and obviously bloodied arm had glass and metal shards embedded in it around the elbow, she had cuts across her face and had bruises appearing on almost every inch of skin. Her denim pants were blood and oil stained, ripped around the knees, and there was a rather alarmingly sized bloodstain spreading from her left hip, or maybe it was soaking down from her left side as the simple pale green shirt she had on was soaked there as well.

The woman herself had (short?) brown hair clinging to her skull with sweat and blood, blue eyes and tanned skin, and had the pained look of someone who just got the snot beat out of them on her face.

"Are you all right? Able to walk?"

"Do I look all right? Who are you?" 

Finally, a response - her voice was hoarse, a voice of someone who'd inhaled smoke or been talking at length.

"Can you stand?"

"I asked, who are you? What the hell is going on?"

Sniper began moving toward her, clipping the support strap back together and letting his rifle swing to his back. She kept crawling until the heel of her palm slipped over the edge of a crater in the asphalt, nearly sending her tumbling backwards.

He paused. "Hey, easy. If I wanted you dead you'd be dead, I couldn't miss you if I tried at this distance."

"Give me a name, damn it," she all but spat at him. "And some answers."

"Fine. Mundy. And if you don't let me get you out of this street you won't live long enough to get answers out of me."

She stopped, chest heaving, and then she swallowed hard. "You don't look like a doctor to me."

He began moving toward her again, and this time she stayed put and allowed him to get within inches of her, only flinching away when he bent down. "I'm not going to hurt you, but I need to know if you can stand."

"With help, maybe. I think I broke a few things, here-" she pointed at the left of her ribcage - which made it likely that the injury was there and blood was soaking downward, not the other way around - and winced at the movement. "Felt a pop when I hit the counter, was thrown into it."

"Come on, up," he shifted around to grab her right arm at the elbow then looped a finger through a belt loop to help stand her upright, where she immediately swayed unsteadily. "Anyone else left in this heap?"

She shook her head slowly, then looked over his shoulder toward the store. "Hang on, my bags-"

"Leave them, you need a stiff drink and stitches." He began to try and lead her down the road, toward where he'd left the truck, but she leaned away from him and actually tried digging her heels in.

"Not to seem ungrateful, but I'm not leaving with some random stranger with a gun, nor am I leaving all my worldly possessions behind."

"You think you'd fare any better if more of those robots show up?"

"At least I know they're trying to kill me, I don't know a thing about you-"

"-I just saved your ass from a-"

"-excuse my interruption."

Sniper and the woman both turned, argument going silent as, abruptly, Spy materialized from the shadows of the alleyway. He was dusty and a bag dangled from one hand, and he gestured at it with his free hand. "Security tapes, all I had thought we were going to find here. It would seem you have outdone me, Sniper. Who is this?"

"Survivor, though for how much longer is anyone's guess," Sniper snorted, looking at the female in annoyance. She gave him a narrow-eyed glare.

"What that a death threat, buddy?"

"No, that was commentary on the fact you are bleeding out and need to be tended to."

"I've got stuff in my bag I can use."

"Oh for- get in there and go get this idiot's shit so she'll stop arguing, would you?" Sniper snapped at Spy, receiving one silent, raised eyebrow in return. "And you are coming with me before you keel over, got it?"  
She turned her head to look directly at Spy. "A black duffel with a red bandana tied to it, and a hard case, about three feet long. They ought to be sitting by the counter, they're not heavy."

With a roll of the eyes the man turned and disappeared through the shattered door frame; Sniper tugged and this time the woman came with him, leaning heavily on the offered arm and stumbling often enough that finally he just slung her arm over his shoulder and more or less carried her along with her toes dragging the ground.

It was awkward and slow going, but finally they were at the truck; Sniper slung the tailgate down and helped her ease up on it, then moved to the cab and reached under the front seat to drag out a battered first aid kit.

She was staring at him when he came back around to her. "You're the only one left alive, then. How?"

She shook her head. "I don't know, I know how to duck? I don't stand in front of things with loaded guns?"

"What happened here?" he asked, popping the latches on the kit and opening it. Broken bones weren't something he could handle, but he had at least a working knowledge of field dressing. "Why robots? Why here?"

She began carefully - wincing and with her breath catching at every little move - to peel the blood-soaked shirt away from her side. "I d-don't know. I walked into t-town - ow, ow - only last night. This is just a little podunk town, all I wanted was some coffee and a sandwich - ow!"

He had reached to help her lift the shirt and had only barely brushed his fingertips against her skin...not the best of signs. "Sorry. Notice anything suspicious?"

"You mean aside from a squadron of killer robots? Nothing I'd consider suspicious - just people living their lives, this looked like a regular town."

"When did the attack happen?"

"Started a couple hours ago, possibly longer? I was in the hardware store, needed a few screws and a spring...um, the mailman had just walked in...then, just, boom. Out of nowhere. Something blew up and the screaming started."

The further he got her shirt up the more convinced he was that this was beyond his skill; her side was similar in texture to ground meat, full of glass and wooden splinters and now dirty from dragging herself across asphalt. Sniper could suture, but not...not this.

"Shit, this is bad."

"No shit?" came the sarcastic reply, followed by a wavering laugh. "I feel like I got sent through a blender. Full of robots and fists."

"I'm going to clean this up the best I can but this is beyond me."

"I had a feeling you'd say that."

Out of the kit came antiseptic, water, cloth, tweezers. He began picking glass and splinters out and trying to rinse the dirt out; the woman squirmed and flinched as he worked, and eventually she thrust out her good arm and clamped her hand on the edge of the tailgate.

"I am going to fall over."

The truck shook and groaned as Spy, appearing as abruptly as before, flung a duffel bag covered in drywall dust and a battered and worn rectangular case into the bed behind the woman.

"I could say the same, your things weigh quite a bit."

Sniper looked up at him, jerking his head toward the cab and mouthing 'Pauling.' He received another eye roll and muttered French as the other man moved away, getting into the passenger seat and slamming the door shut.

"Mundy, was it?"

"Yeah."

"Well, Mundy...before I pass out, thanks. And, why are you here?"

He tossed a shard of glass over a shoulder and looked up at her. "A package was supposed to be waiting here for us."

"See that building by the gas station there?"

"Yeah?"

"That was the post office."

The building in question was not a building so much as a pile of gravel. Despite himself, Sniper hung his head. "...right."

The truck shifted again as the passenger door opened and Spy climbed back out, a phone clutched in a hand. "She comes with us."

Sniper dropped the cloth and bottle of water he was holding as he suddenly had to jump up and grab the woman by the shoulders as she began tipping backward. "I thought that was sort of a given, mate."

"Miss Pauling has instructed me to bring her back with us at any cost," Spy went on, tapping the phone against a palm. "She seems to think that between the tapes I recovered and the possibility of this woman witnessing something informative, we may be able to ascertain what this courier was carrying and why the robots struck this town."

"Well isn't that just nice of Miss Pauling," Sniper snorted. "And if she hadn't said bring her?"

"One more body would not make this town any worse," Spy said quietly. "As it is, I doubt we will get her back in time."

"She's not that bad-" Sniper grumbled through gritted teeth. "-not yet, anyway. Bleeding out was a scare tactic just to get her to budge herself. She did get the snot kicked out of her though. Does the Medic know we're coming back with her in tow?"

"That will depend on whether Miss Pauling decided to inform him."

"In other words, no he doesn't, because I'm betting you didn't mention her state. Come here, hold her upright while I tie this off." He pressed a thick pad of cotton bandage to the worst of the shredded skin along the woman's side - she was only semi-lucid but still hissed unhappily - and then tied it off with Spy keeping the woman sitting upright.

"Pack this in, I'll get her in the cab."

"Have I mentioned I am not your servant boy?" Spy said dryly, not moving from where he stood at the tailgate.

Sniper slipped an arm under the woman's legs and one behind her head. "No, but if you're so damn concerned about your time being wasted, you won't leave me to do everything." He hefted the woman - she was heavier than she looked - and then purposely jerked his head toward the driver's side door. With an exasperated sigh the Spy came around and opened it with a sarcastic flourish, then stood back to give Sniper room to maneuver the female into the middle of the seat, then slide in beside her and prop her up against his side.

"Just toss it into the back and shut the tailgate, let's get the hell out of here,"

The ride back was silent, save for the two instances where the woman woke up. The first time she was groggy and hardly seemed to know where she was, and also was not awake long. The second time she lifted her head from Sniper's shoulder, squinting at him blearily.

"Mundy?"

"What?"

"...Shiloh MacKenna. Thanks for not killing me."


	2. Ch 2 - The Man on Film

He made Spy call ahead so when the battered truck finally trundled through the heavy steel gate Medic was already waiting for them, Engineer in tow and with a stretcher visible between them.

The woman, Shiloh, had again awakened but not said anything further; she was laying with her head back against the top of the truck seat, breathing shallowly and her face pale - Sniper at first thought she would have been better off sleeping the whole trip, but then the nagging suspicion of head trauma popped to mind.

He pulled the truck right up to the others, got out, and was immediately shoved aside by Medic as the man pushed his head into the truck to peer at Shiloh.

"Patient is still alive," he quipped, then jerked his head back as Shiloh took an awkward, across-the-body swing at him the moment she noticed his hands coming for her.

"Left side is the bad side," Sniper pointed out dryly. He dug fingers into the doctor's coat and dragged the man back. "Grab her by that arm and you might kill her from shock, if she doesn't kill you for hurting her."

"You know what? How about I just get out of the truck myself," Shiloh muttered wearily.

"Just move," Sniper grunted, shouldering in and giving Shiloh a look. "I got you in here, I can get you out." She didn't argue when he slid arms under her, even leaning forward to let him get his arm behind her back, then with him providing lift and her using her good arm to scoot, Sniper straightened and lifted her out of the cab of the truck and turned as Medic picked up his end of the stretcher. "Just get moving, I've got her."

"I'm not made of glass," Shiloh protested with a hiss as she squirmed to relieve pressure on her left side, which was pressed against Sniper's chest.

Engineer chuckled, grinning. "No, but you're full of it if how you look is any indication. I got this, go." He yanked the stretcher from the Medic and stepped back, still chuckling.

It didn't take but a few minutes to get across the bare dirt courtyard and down the short flight of concrete steps to the infirmary, which was little more than a clean room with the Medic's things set up inside. While the Medic bustled around, grabbing tools and materials, Sniper eased the woman down on what amounted to a table with a thin layer of padding on it; over their heads was a set of lights - off, at the moment - and an empty bracket into which the Medic, huffing, snapped what looked like a wide-bore gun with a fire hose attachment.

"Nature of injuries?"

Shiloh was staring up at the gun warily. "Uh, I got the shit kicked out of me by robots...what the hell is that?"

Medic connected a heavy hose to the back of the gun and flipped a switch; the thing hummed to life, a faint red glow visible up the barrel. "Medigun. But it is not yet time to use it." He reached down and yanked her shirt up - Sniper politely averted his eyes - and leaned down, delicately adjusting his glasses and almost rubbing his nose against the ruined skin. "Foreign objects within the wound, I will have to remove them first."

"Fine, whatever," Shiloh muttered as Medic turned away and came back wheeling a rickety table with surgical tools arranged on a towel on top of it. She swallowed and turned her head as he selected what looked like over-sized tweezers, gaze landing on Sniper as the man glanced her way; Sniper focused on her face a moment or two, then looked away again as the Medic snapped the lights on and went to work plucking glass and who knew what else out of the woman.

The silence within the infirmary was broken only by the occasional click of glass or rock being deposited on the table by the Medic, or Shiloh's involuntary noises of pain; Sniper was trying not to stare at the procedure, but kept glancing back just to see how far along things were and kept finding his gaze locking with Shiloh's, the woman getting paler by the moment.

"Are you about done, doc?"

"Nearly. Why?"

"Your patient is about to pass out on you."

He smirked a bit as he saw the faintest flicker of offense cross her features, and she looked away. "M'fine..." he heard her mutter.

"Not sure why you're going about it with her still awake anyhow."

"Door is that way if you do not care for my methods," the German grunted. He dropped the bloodied tool onto the table and gave it a shove away, then reached up to pull the medigun closer. "Do not move, this may hurt." He gripped a handle above the barrel and pulled it down.

The red glow abruptly intensified into a steady stream of energy, hitting the woman in the solar plexus and making her go rigid in surprise and pain; there was a grating noise followed by three hollow pops as broken ribs snapped into place, and the shredded skin on her side began to rapidly scab over and draw together. Shiloh, for her part, grit her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut, digging fingers into the padding beneath her with such force that a few fingernails scratched through and opened cuts in the plastic covering.

After a few moments Medic shut the gun off and pushed it up toward the ceiling; Shiloh, to all appearances, was limp on the table, tears running soundlessly down grimy cheeks and her breath coming in small, stuttering spurts. Without a word the Medic yanked her shirt up again and began prodding at the pink new skin, muttering to himself in German as he examined.

"Bandage and aspirin will complete treatment," Medic said after a few moments, turning even as he spoke to pick up the items off a nearby counter. Shiloh hardly seemed to register his presence as he wrapped her abdomen in clean bandage soaked in something that smelled impossibly clean. "Do not over-stress the new skin or it will break open. You are free to leave."

Sniper snorted. "Such a bedside manner you've got."

Medic retrieved the table with its tools and brought it over to the tiny sink set into the end of the counter along the far wall. "It is not my job to be polite, it is to keep you dummkopfs alive and functioning. Politeness only inserts steps into what is a straightforward process. Now, out - I've cleaning to do." 

"Hey, Sniper-"

Sniper turned as behind him the infirmary door opened, enough to let Engineer's head poke through. "-Miss Pauling is wanting to speak with you, about Sandville and what you, uh, found." He looked between Sniper and the woman, the overhead lights glinting off his goggles and giving him a bug-eyed look.

"Guess I'll go say my piece, then. Did she say anything about our guest?" Sniper jerked a thumb toward Shiloh, the woman only just now making attempts to sit upright.

"Not to me, but I imagine she'll get to it once she's through with you. Spy's already in there - you head on in and I'll keep our guest company."

Sniper glanced back at Shiloh in time to see her swing her legs to the floor. "Right. I'll be back around to find you two once I'm done talking."

Engineer nodded and stepped back to let the door swing open wider; Sniper turned and left, the faint sounds of Engineer introducing himself following him out the door as he crossed the courtyard to head into the yawning door of a warehouse.

The facility they were using as a base must have been a military operation at some point in its history; it was surrounded by a heavy steel wall topped with barbed wire, sixteen foot tall in some areas, and the south-facing gate was reinforced and took forever to crank itself open. Along the western side were two watch towers that rose up above the buildings connected to their bases, each one easily twenty five feet tall at the least, with windows that allowed anyone in them to see out in all directions. There was this bland, empty dirt courtyard that ran between the western and the eastern buildings plus the warehouse that was near to the eastern buildings but not connected to them. The eastern buildings had a single large main watch tower that rose even higher than the other two, and within the base of the main tower was a heavily fortified door that led into an underground section that - Sniper suspected - was somewhere under the warehouse itself.

The buildings themselves were concrete and heavy glass, dimly lit, and smelled musty; truth be told Sniper didn't care for the place, preferring the open views from the towers, and couldn't wait to get out of here and to somewhere more interesting. He was especially tired of tromping across this damned courtyard, trying not to breathe as even his careful steps began kicking up a fine dust.

He was coughing and snorting when he got to the warehouse and wound his way around the decoy vehicles - old trucks, cars, vans, even a tow truck, all means to get around and not announce their profession to anyone - to get to the little room in the back right corner. It was made of a dark, oily wood, had a single dingy window, and inside it was a wall of electronics: viewscreens, monitors, panels of buttons and blinking lights, mics and recording equipment, and playback equipment.

Spy and Miss Pauling were seated in front of the playback panels, for once all but one viewscreen turned off making the dark little room even gloomier.

"Ah, good, come in and sit down Sniper, I want to show you something." Miss Pauling's voice seemed oddly chipper in the darkness, and Sniper fumbled his way into an empty chair.

"Play it again, Spy, please."

With a quiet noise of acknowledgement, Spy turned a knob and the sound of a tape rewinding filled the air, then he released it and pressed a button and the single powered viewscreen flickered then began to play back a scene.

Sniper leaned forward as the silent video played - he could see a very small section of what must have been the main street of Sandville from an isometric point of view, could see its citizens as they bustled about on whatever business they were attending to. He suddenly stiffened a moment, and jabbed a finger toward the screen. "Hang on a moment, look right there."

Miss Pauling nodded. "Yeah, I know, that's our 'friend' if what Spy tells me is true."

Shiloh, her bag slung over a shoulder and the rectangular case swinging from one hand, was coming down the street toward the camera's view. She was just passing the doorway of what looked like a bakery when the door burst open and a man came barreling out of it, colliding with her and sending them both to the ground in a tangle. He was in a dark jacket and pants, wearing a wide-brimmed hat that, at this angle, hid his face. The man didn't even stop to say anything, simply roughly extracted himself and almost trampled Shiloh in his attempt to get away; Sniper watched as a visibly annoyed Shiloh stood up, dusted herself off, and readjusted the shoulder strap of her bag.

The scene froze as Spy touched a button, Pauling resting a hand on his shoulder. "And, the next one, please."

The Frenchman ejected the tape and inserted another, fast-forwarding through the footage until he froze the tape. "This one came from within the post office building and is damaged, but watch closely."

On the screen, the film flickering and stuttering, one could see the same man that had collided with Shiloh in the previous tape. He was standing in the doorway, pacing, anxiously checking his watch; on the floor at his feet behind him was a large box of some kind - the footage was black and white and so the box itself looked almost white on the screen save for darker segments that bore heavy rivets running along its sides at the corners. Its dimensions weren't clear due to camera angle, but it looked to be about half the size of a steamer trunk, and the man simply kept pacing until the tape went abruptly blank. Again, the combination of camera angle and his ridiculous hat obscured his face.

Spy wordlessly ejected the tape and inserted a third. This time it was from earlier in the day, showing a battered delivery truck - unmarked - driving up to the post office, and the mysterious box-bearing man climbing from the driver's seat. He raised his head and looked up and down the street, his face a mere glimpse of a bearded chin and a hooked, beaky nose poking out from under the brim of that hat.

"I didn't see that truck anywhere in town, did you?"

Spy shook his head. "I did not. It was not among the destruction - there were, in fact, very few vehicles present in the town at all."

"It looks like that may have been the courier the Administrator wanted us to intercept," Pauling said, looking between the two men. "And our guest is also the only one who may have seen this man's face, and possibly that box and truck. Did Medic fix her up?"

"She was sitting up when I left," Sniper replied. "Engineer's with her."

"I'm going to need to talk to her," Pauling went on, pushing her glasses up her nose. "And also report everything to the Administrator...she is not going to be happy that we didn't get what she sent us for, but if this woman saw the man we might still be able to track him down and see if he has that box with him still."

Sniper looked to Spy. "I take it you filled Miss Pauling in on everything, right?"

"As much as I observed. Our stories will only differ in that you were the one who found this woman, this Shiloh MacKenna."

"Oh, yes, tell me about that-" Pauling interrupted, stepping back and beginning to pace in the small room.

Leaning back, Sniper tossed an arm over the back of his chair. "Not much to it, was walking down the street and thought I heard something. Ducked into an alley to listen, and here she came flying through a door with a robot on top of her, swinging a hammer at it. I stepped out to help her, ended up there were five of the things - odd thing about it though, was they were all unarmed."

"Unarmed? What do you mean?"

"I mean they didn't have guns. They were Soldierbots, but didn't have rockets or anything but their fists. They were just brawling in the street."

"That is rather strange," Pauling said after a moment, chewing on her lower lip. "If it were just one bot I could believe maybe this Shiloh disarmed it either on accident or otherwise, but you said there were five?"

"I shot five, I can tell you that much. If there were any more than that they didn't come popping out at us."

Pauling kept pacing, crossing her arms as moments later she stopped and faced the now-blank viewscreen. "Yeah, I need to speak to this woman. Bring her in?"

"Miss Pauling, if I am not needed further...?"

"No, no, go ahead, Spy," Pauling replied absently.

Sniper followed him out, Spy heading for the eastern side of the facility while Sniper headed back to the infirmary. As he expected neither Engineer or Shiloh were there, and Medic was clueless on where they might have gone.

"Bloody great..." Sniper muttered as he walked back outside, staring around him in annoyance. Yet another thing to hate about this place was its size, and now it seemed he'd be searching the place...well, better start with the likely suspects, he supposed. His steps turned toward their mess hall.

\------------------------------

"Name's Dell Conagher, ma'am, Engineer by trade. Call me Dell, if you like."

"Shiloh MacKenna, pleased to meet you. I'm guessing you're my assigned babysitter."

Engineer chuckled. "Nah, I wouldn't call it that. Tour guide, maybe - speaking of, anywhere you're needing to be? Looks like you could use a shower, for one."

Shiloh looked down at herself - bloodied pants, a rumpled and stretched shirt from the Medic's tugging, made worse by the tacky congealed blood that made it cling to her awkwardly. "A shower would be nice, yes. And I've got a change of clothes in my bag, if you don't mind us going back to that truck."

"Not at all, just you follow me." He reached the door well before she did, each steps of hers slightly wobbly and not exactly confident. "You want an arm to lean on?"

"I think I've got it, but thanks for the offer anyway. I feel like I got hit by a tractor trailer..."

"At least you aren't looking it, unless you count the bloodstains."

She laughed quietly. "I guess. At least I'm walking." She reached the door and stepped through it as he held it open for her. "Thanks. Mind if I ask where we are?"

"Well, mind? Not really the right question to be asking - I don't mind answering it, just realize I can't really answer it in a specific sense, not without getting you and me in a heap of trouble."

"And why's that?"

Engineer chuckled and leaned on the side of the truck as Shiloh clumsily hopped the tailgate and into the back. "Well, see, there's things around here we're paid not to share or talk about. Really, my own name isn't something I'm supposed to be waving around much."

Shiloh dropped into a cross-legged position, carefully picking up the rectangular case and popping the latches to peer inside. "Then why share your name with me?"

"Seemed like the polite thing to do."

He glanced over his shoulder - whatever she saw in that case seemed to satisfy her, as she latched it closed again and slipped the strap over her head before looping her hands through the carry strap of the duffel bag. "Want a hand carrying any of that?"

"Uh...this, I guess?" She slung the case off her shoulder and offered it to him; he took it and easily lifted it over the truck's side - compared to what he was used to hauling around the case barely weighed anything. "Thanks."

"Not a problem, ma'am. Now, you just follow me and I'll get you to the showers. I'll even sit at the door so no one walks in on you. Lucky for you our entire group ain't here, there's five unaccounted for."

"What are you guys, some kind of military specialist group?"

Engineer reached up to take his hat off and hook it to his belt, then tugged his goggles free and offered her a toothy smile. "Oh no, we're much better than that."

\--------------------------------------

As blood-soaked as Shiloh had been, Sniper guessed he should have moved the bathroom up a bit higher in his priority list, but regardless he finally came across Engineer sitting outside of the lockerroom entrance.

"Guessing she's in there?"

"Yep," came the simple reply.

Sniper grunted and moved to lean against the wall next to the door, crossing his arms. "Everyone was here when Spy and I left, where'd the rest of our merry little band get sent?"

Engineer crossed his hands behind his head and tipped the chair back on two legs, bracing the back against the wall. "Well, Heavy and Pyro were sent out after something - what, I don't know. The rest of them are out on a supply run, though if you ask me a 'supply run' is simply an excuse to get Scout and Soldier out from under foot."

Sniper glanced toward the door as he heard the squeak of a faucet being shut off. "Hope they're having better luck than we did - another busted town and wild goose chase. This whole business has gotten pretty bloody stupid."

"Can't say I disagree there...not sure what we're supposed to be chasing down, bet we'd have a better chance of finding anything if we knew what we're looking for."

"Job used to be damn simple - see robots, shoot robots. That was it."

They both paused as the door opened; Shiloh was standing framed in the doorway, peering out at them, and Sniper took a moment to actually look at her.

She was a handful of inches shorter than him, he estimated, and her hair actually almost brushed her shoulders in length and had a touch of red to its tint; she had broad shoulders and a sturdy frame, tanned skin and a lean build, and pale blue eyes. She'd swapped the bloody clothing for a pair of plain pants and a collared, short-sleeved polo in a faded brown, and boots that had seen better days.

"That was quick," Engineer said into the silence.

She shrugged in response. "I've learned not to waste time when you get a chance at cleaning up." 

Sniper stepped away from the wall and jerked a thumb in the direction he'd just come from. "Hope you feel up to talking, we've got somewhere to be."

Shiloh looked at him, one eyebrow raised. "Right now?"

"Afraid so."

She reached behind her toward the duffel and Engineer leaned forward and brought all four chair legs back to the floor. "I'll keep an eye on it, ma'am."

She studied him a moment, expression unreadable, then signed in resignation and moved silently to stand beside Sniper, one hand moving to the back of her neck to brush away water dripping from damp hair. Sniper began to just walk, trusting she'd follow and then being satisfied when he heard her steps behind him.

They were halfway across the dirt courtyard when he heard her softly mutter "beginning to think you should have left me in the street."

He glanced over his shoulder. "Why's that?"

She shrugged, staring at some point on the ground somewhere ahead of him. "I've got a feeling I'm not going to like this conversation."

Sniper snorted. "I don't see what you've got to worry about-"

"-I'm in the forced company of a band of mercenaries, according to my chaperone back there," she interrupted. "I'm the only one who was left in that town that had a package you guys were looking for, and while I'm thankful you helped me out I'm not exactly thrilled about where this may be going."

He stopped, turning around to square up to her. "You're in the company of nine of the most skilled men in the damn world, sheila. If you were supposed to be dead, you'd be dead - we're not going to hurt you after going to the effort of getting you back here."

She stared him down. "You brought me back because you were told to, I'm pretty sure I didn't dream that up."

He jabbed a finger in her direction. "Not me, lady. I don't just leave people behind."

Calmly she used a finger to push his to the side. "Fine then, let's just see if I'm right."

"Yeah, let's," he grunted, turning and continuing to stomp toward the warehouse. Bloody woman...


	3. Ch 3 - Mugshot

"All right, have a seat right here and let me show you a few things on tape."

As directed, Shiloh dropped into the seat that Spy had vacated and sat there in a stony silence as Miss Pauling played for her the same three segments of tape she'd played for both Spy and Sniper.

"We can see here that this is you, being run over by this man here, and...here, and here, we see the same man. We're looking for that trunk behind him here, see it?" Shiloh nodded silently and Pauling continued. "And we're also curious about what that man looked like."

"Well...he was wearing navy blue pants and a jacket, wasn't a suit, strikes me more of like...I don't know, a uniform. And he had a beard - black - and this big nose. I think one of his front teeth were chipped, since he snapped at me for getting in his way when he collided with me there-" Shiloh gestured idly at the screen, where the bakery was frozen in view. "-and with a mouth that big, that close, you can't miss seeing the teeth. He smelled like the back half of a dead cow, too. Like he rolled in it, though he looked fairly clean."

"Anything else?"

Sniper watched the woman's brow furrow as she thought a moment, then she shook her head. "Did you see anything like a delivery truck at all?"

Shiloh turned her head to look toward him, eyebrow raised. "No. There weren't a lot of trucks or anything like that in that town. Lots of people walking...it was kind of a weird town to begin with, everyone was stupidly talkative but it felt forced, you know? Like they were only being nice to humor you, or because they had to. There was a little diner down toward the motel, and the people in there were so friendly but fake but sweet that I think a few teeth rotted out of my head just for being in there."

The corner of Sniper's mouth curled up in a sort of suppressed grin, but his response was cut off as Pauling stuck her head between the two. "You're sure you didn't see a truck or this box?"

Shiloh shook her head, her gaze shifting back to the paused tape. "I didn't see either, and I also didn't see this man again after he ran me over. Sorry I can't be of more help, unless you want a mug shot for reference."

Pauling's eyebrows went up. "A what?"

"Mug shot. Drawing. I'm no art expert, but I think I could put him to paper for you."

"That would be very helpful, let me get you something to write with and on." Pauling hurried out of the dingy little room, leaving Shiloh and Sniper to stare at one another.

He sniffed a bit. "So far this conversation seems pretty innocent."

She snorted. "I still feel like there's a hammer suspended over my head, I'm just waiting for it to drop."

"Negative little nancy, aren't you?"

"I prefer Pragmatic Paulina, if you don't mind."

She gave him a half smile as he chuckled silently, shaking his head. Pauling came back in then, a memo pad and a handful of pencils with her, all of which she handed to Shiloh and then stood back with her arms crossed and one foot anxiously tapping. Shiloh pointedly gave the tapping foot a look - it continued to tap, but more quietly - and then crossed one leg over the other and propped the memo pad in her lap as she selected a pencil that was sharpened enough to suffice.

Sniper edged a bit closer to watch over the woman's shoulder as she began making quick, messy swipes over the paper with the pencil; at first it all seemed like random curved markings, but as he watched she began to shape things, her lower lip between her teeth as she worked and with a spare pencil clutched in her other hand. After a while a face could be seen coming together, made even clearer as she began erasing some lines and making other lines darker.

He let out a quiet grunt, a sort of 'huh' as Shiloh worked, and then suddenly she was done. She handed the memo pad over to Pauling, who flipped it around and studied it.

"I didn't see his hair under that hat, but here's the best I could do."

"Well it's no Kicasso but it's still helpful, thank you," was Pauling's reply. She held up her pointer finger, shaking it in the air at nothing in particular. "If you remember anything else I need to be told immediately, for now I need to report to the Administrator. Sniper, keep an eye on her, I'll let you know if she's needed for anything else."

Shiloh frowned heavily. "And what am I supposed to do until then?"

"Rest, eat, I don't care so long as you don't leave until I'm certain we won't need you further."

Slowly, Shiloh turned in her seat to look at Sniper and mouthed 'I told you so.' He gave her a helpless shrug, then cleared his throat. "Can't just take her at her word?"

"If I thought I could I would, but I don't want us having to track her down again if for some reason we have to."

"I already told you everything I noticed and know," Shiloh interjected. "What difference is it going to make?"

"Look, it's getting dark anyway. Just spend the night and hopefully by morning I'll have an answer for you," Pauling called over a shoulder as she bustled from the room, voice fading as she disappeared into the warehouse.

Shiloh pressed her lips into a thin line, then again looked at Sniper. "And there's the hammer."

"So you're stuck here one night-"

"-POSSIBLY one night, but my hunch says otherwise. You really should have left me in that street, Mundy."

 

\-----------------------

She sullenly followed Sniper as he walked back through the warehouse and back over to the western side, leading her down a narrow hallway that dead-ended in the room they used as a mess hall. It smelled of stale beer and coffee, with a little kitchen area against the back wall and two round tables - one painted up and marked for poker - with a cluster of chairs messily shoved in around them.

"Coffee?" he asked, sidestepping a chair and heading for what he hoped was a decently fresh pot sitting on its warmer.

"...sure, why not."

"How do you take it?"

"Black as tar."

He let out a low whistle, but procured two mugs - his #1 Sniper mug was with his things up in the main tower on the other side of the facility - and brought her one back, finding she'd settled into a chair at the not-a-poker table. She took the mug with a mumbled thanks, staring down into the liquid silently while he sat down across from her, propping a foot on an empty chair.

"Going to glare a hole through the wood." He blew away a cloud of steam, then took a sniff and a cautious sip of the coffee - it was probably a day old, at the most. Drinkable, anyway

Shiloh flared her nostrils but otherwise didn't reply, moving the mug to her mouth and taking a sip without blowing on it; Sniper continued to slowly down the coffee, deciding that if she wanted to sit in awkward silence he wasn't going to force smalltalk.

And so they sat, for how long he wasn't certain; Engineer came in at some point, helped himself to coffee, and sat with them with only a questioning look to Sniper, who just shrugged with a warning look. There was another long stretch of silence until Shiloh seemed to finally notice they'd been joined by another and sat up a bit in her chair.

Engineer smiled and gestured toward the door with his half-empty mug. "I've got a workshop near the warehouse, your bags are locked in it and it's not like anyone around here is interested in taking them."

She sighed slowly. "Yeah, thanks...sorry, just - when your entire life fits into a bag, you get a little paranoid when it's not within view."

Engineer paused mid-drink to peer at her from over the mug's edge. "Should we be taking that in a literal sense?"

She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table and running a hand through drying hair. "Pretty much, what's in there is all I have. Bare minimum for survival, I pack light."

Engineer looked partly surprised, partly impressed at that. "Seems a little odd for a woman to be carrying her life in a duffel. You moving cross-country or something?"

"If you want to call it that, sure. I've definitely put a lot of miles behind me, and that's about all I feel like saying on the matter."

"Uh...well, all right, sorry to bother," Engineer replied, giving Sniper a side-eyed glance.

"Where'd you learn to draw?" Sniper interjected, picking up the obvious cue for a change in subject.

She gave him a faint smile. "Mom had me in art classes from four years old to about nine years...she wanted me to be this next big thing, kept describing how she wanted to dress all fancy and drink champagne at big art galleries and brag about how her daughter was so damn great at art." She made a face as she all but spat out the word 'art.' "I can't paint worth a damn, but I can manage some things in pencil and pen."

"Ever try drafting?" Engineer asked, draining the rest of his coffee.

She shook her head. "No, that requires schooling to get a job anywhere reputable." She tipped her head back and downed the rest of her coffee in a few large gulps, then settled her empty mug on the table in front of her. "Look...if it's all the same to you two, I'd just like to curl up in a corner and get this day over with. Just show me a patch of floor where I won't be in the way and I can take care of the rest."

Engineer nodded toward the door. "We've got something of a barracks back that way, on your right. Find a bed that isn't too dusty and doesn't have anything on or near it and it's yours."

The chair scraped against the floor as she stood up, letting her legs push it out from under her. "Thanks. Could you let me at my bag?"

"Sure thing."

Sniper stayed where he was as Engineer got up and led Shiloh from the mess hall; they were gone a minute or two, then Engineer came back alone and dropped back into his chair.

"All right, want to share what's got her so riled up?"

"Aside from having a bloody bad day? Miss Pauling's said she ain't allowed to leave until the Administrator says so, and she's not exactly happy about that."

"Can't say I blame her," Engineer said, clasping his hands over his stomach and leaning his chair back to balance on just two legs. "What brought that about?"

"Well."

\--------------------------------------------

"Hold the drawing up to the camera again, Miss Pauling. Closely."

Pauling gripped the top and bottom of the sketch and leaned closer to the little camera sitting atop the desk in her office. As usual, the Administrator herself was not on screen - all Pauling had was a speakerphone that, as of late, was periodically malfunctioning which resulted in the older woman's voice coming through as tinny and two octaves too high. Tonight was one of those malfunctioning nights, and Pauling tried to not let it distract her.

"She says she's told us all she knows regarding this gentleman, but I didn't want to let her leave until-"

"I know this man."

Pauling blinked at the interruption. "You do? Who is-"

"Make no mistake, Miss Pauling: the girl is not to leave until I give word. Lock her up if you must, but she must. Not. Leave. Am I perfectly clear?"

"Of course, Administrator. But uh, why?"

"That's not your concern. You have your instructions, I will contact you again."

"Yes, Administrator," Pauling said with a heavy sigh as the camera and speakers both clicked off, remotely shut off from the Administrator's end. "...she is not going to be happy, at all."


	4. Ch 4 - Suspicions and Meetings

As usual Sniper was up well before anyone else - almost up before the sun was in fact, but that was just how he preferred it: everything was nice and quiet, it was stupidly easy to see something stirring when everything else was peaceful, and the solitude was well worth the price of an extra hour of sleep. He had quietly acquired coffee and made his way up into the main tower of their little facility, and was seated on a crate with his cup of coffee in hand, his rifle across his knees, and the sunrise just beginning to peek up over the horizon.

He estimated it to be around 8am when he first saw movement down below in the courtyard; it seemed Shiloh was something of an early riser herself, as she had just emerged from the eastern building and perched herself on the concrete slab that the steps leading into the infirmary were built into. She had a piece of toast in her hand, and as Sniper watched he saw Spy walk from the same door, a glass with a shot of brandy in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

Through his scope he could watch the two chat over something not overly important, as Spy was hard to read as is and Shiloh didn't seem nearly so annoyed as she'd been last night. She polished off her toast and unlaced her boots, then slid off socks and pulled her knees to her chest, bare toes curling lightly over the edge of the concrete as she rocked back and forth gently where she sat, still talking.

"This is not somewhere I'd want to be barefoot, sheila," he muttered, taking his eye from his scope for a moment to brush dust from its end, then placed it back to his eye in time to see both Spy and Shiloh turn in unison as Miss Pauling came bustling out of the warehouse pushing her little scooter.

Sniper let out a thoughtful grunt, putting his rifle into his lap and leaning closer to the window - the three of them were standing too far apart for him to see all of them through the scope's narrow view. Below him he watched the tiny figures of Pauling and Shiloh approach one another...and then Pauling must have said something Shiloh didn't like, because immediately the woman's stance went rigid and she jabbed a finger at the shorter female. Pauling seemed to shrug and then crammed her helmet onto her head before hopping onto her scooter and removing a square remote from the bag on its side; the gate began to slowly grind open then immediately began to close again and, with Shiloh angrily stomping after her, gesturing and apparently shouting, Pauling rushed through the narrow open slit right before the gate shut again, nearly in Shiloh's face.

She beat a fist against the metal in frustration, then turned around to spout something at Spy, whose body language at least appeared to be sympathetic to whatever had just happened. Sniper leaned an arm against the window, then pushed his hat up and put his forehead on his arm.

"Guess you found your hammer," he muttered.

\---------------------------------------------

Later that afternoon Sniper spied light reflecting off something in the distance, and his scope showed it to be a battered delivery truck with Red Bread painted on the sides. Due to the ones driving it he was somewhat surprised to see it was free of blood, still had at least the front bumper (that he could see) and, if that glinting sunlight was any indication, the windshield was intact as well.

He leaned his rifle against the wall and headed toward the stairs out of the tower; if that was truly Soldier and the others returning, there might be a bit of...well, he seriously doubted the initial meeting of the rest mercenaries and their guest would go well.

His boots had just hit the concrete outside the eastern buildings when he heard the grind of the gate opening. He could only see the outer wall of the warehouse from this doorway but could hear the thump of tires passing over the gate's frame and he hurried to get around the warehouse and across the courtyard to the other buildings. Shiloh had disappeared somewhere inside after the altercation with Pauling, maybe he could quickly get inside and find her before the others got out of the truck.

The door leading inside toward the mess hall and barracks almost caught him in the face as Engineer came hurrying out of it. "Miss MacKenna is-"

"-not out here," Sniper finished for him. "I'm going to find her, stall the others would you?"

Engineer nodded and headed for the truck as it came to a skidding halt, Demoman at the wheel. Sniper hurried through the halls, checking first the mess hall and then the bathroom, then slowing as he entered the barracks as very soft music reached him.

There were a line of beds and bunks down both walls in here, another clue to this facility's possible military past, and Shiloh was perched on the bed the furthest away from the ones in use - she was sitting much like he'd seen her sitting this morning, with her knees to her chest and barefoot, her back pressed against the wall. A small radio was at her side, and she had almost seemed to be dozing when he'd entered; she stirred and turned her head to watch him walk down the line of beds toward her, one hand moving to click the radio off.

"What?"

Sniper paused at the foot of her bed. "A few of our group just showed up, didn't think it'd be the best of ideas for you the encounter them without some forewarning."

She ran a hand through her hair, raising an eyebrow at him. "Do tell."

"Anyway-"

At that moment the barracks door flew open and banged against the wall, kicked open by apparently a mouth on legs as words reached them both before the person behind the door even came into view.

"-I tell ya, this sort of crap is a waste of my skills. I am not a grocery go-getter, the only thing I should be getting is a kill count and a pile of trophies for killing robots, killed so damn many of the things I'm getting bored of it you know? And-"

Scout came into view as he talked, his bat slung over a shoulder and his eyes shut with the effort of talking so much. He made it down the line of beds to his own, throwing himself down and tapping the bat on a palm, until he finally noticed Sniper standing there, and beyond him-

"-who is that? Who IS that? Who are you?" He sat up, pointing the bat at Shiloh.

Shiloh tightened fingers into the fabric of her pants, the only visible reaction to the question. "Shiloh. Shiloh MacKenna. Who are you?"

"Scout, can it," Sniper cut in, frowning at the other male. 

"Uh, howabout no. Why's there a girl in here? You two aren't-"

"-no, we are not," Sniper growled through gritted teeth. "Whatever you were about to finish that sentence with, we are not. C'mon, before I strangle this idiot."

Shiloh slipped socks and boots back on and followed Sniper back out of the barracks, Scout jumping up to follow.

"No, seriously - why are you here? Shiloh, right? So listen Shiloh - this ain't a place for girls, you know? There's bullets and guns and robots, this ain't a walk in the park and you're gonna get hurt-"

"-does he stop to breathe, ever?" Shiloh muttered, Sniper only just hearing her over Scout's babbling.

"If you punch him in the throat, maybe," Sniper snorted in reply. "That is Scout, and I guarantee you will be wanting to strangle him within ten minutes."

She smiled a bit at that and lengthened her stride to pull up beside Sniper; there wasn't enough room in the hallway to comfortably walk three abreast, so Scout was stuck walking behind the two of them. He was still obvious and audible, but more easily ignored; Sniper gave her a nod and a quiet "smart girl" and then stood out of her way to let her through the door first when they reached it.

The truck had been moved up closer to the concrete slab and Engineer was watching as two others were unloading it - a man whose upper half of his face was covered by a helmet and a black man with an eyepatch. Only the one in the eyepatch even noticed them, and his one eye widened a bit as his attention settled on them.

"Hey, who's the lass?"

Scout suddenly slung an arm around Shiloh's shoulders - which dragged her head down as she was taller than he - and jabbed a finger at her. "I was asking the same thing, don't even know why she's here. Pretty stupid if you ask me - she's gonna get hurt if she sticks around here too long-"

"-I will force feed you your own teeth if you do not get your hands off me," Shiloh growled, head turned so the words were snarled almost directly into Scout's ear.

Demo laughed, nearly dropping the crate he was toting. "Aye, I think I like her already."

Engineer chuckled, reaching to take the crate as Demo handed it over to him. "This here is Shiloh MacKenna. Seems she's our guest for the time being - Administrator's orders."

Shiloh jabbed an elbow sharply into Scout's side, eliciting a yelp and a glower from the male, and then straightened as the other male in the helmet came stomping up to her to wag a finger just under her nose.

"It is bad luck to have a woman on the field of battle! I will not tolerate this!"

She reached up to give the finger-waggling hand a push away. "Then I guess it's a good thing we aren't on a battlefield. You fellows have names?"

Demo leaned into the back of the truck and came up with a crate of what looked like beer bottles. "Tavish DeGroot, Demoman and one of the best at that. That there is Soldier, now budge it, you lump - get this stuff inside so we can get to drinking."

Growling, Soldier took a few steps back. "I've got my eye on you, woman. Don't think I don't."

"I don't think I care," Shiloh said dryly, crossing her arms and watching as Soldier grabbed another crate from the back of the truck and disappeared after the others. After a moment she looked back at Sniper. "So is this all of you, or are there more surprises in store?"

"There's two more of us but they're not important, just a fat guy and a mute firebug. Don't worry though, I'll keep them from bothering you. So hey, you got a boyfriend? You look like the sort who might but you never know until you ask-"

Sniper swung a hand and connected with the back of Scout's head. "Would you shut up for five bloody minutes?"

Shiloh took a deep breath and stared up at the sky, then moved toward the door again. "I'm going back to my bed and my radio-"

"-you like music? Hey, I love music, why don't I-"

Sniper seized Scout by the neck of his shirt and dragged him to a halt. "You are going to find something better to do than bug her, or I'm going to put a few holes in your head and maybe by some miracle some brains'll leak IN, got it?"

"Hey HEY who do you think you are?"

Shiloh shut the door behind her, the argument fading from hearing as she moved further down the hallway, and it wasn't audible at all by the time she got back to her bed; she slipped her shoes off and laid back against the flat pillow, resting an arm across her forehead and sighing heavily. One bare foot began tapping gently against the other in time to the beat of a big bandstand number, and she didn't move until hours later when Engineer came to rouse her and let her know it was dinnertime.

"They're not that bad...mostly. Soldier is sort of a mixed bag, but he's not hard to deal with."

Shiloh sort of nodded, pulling socks and boots on again. "How many more of you are there? I think uh...the short, annoying little boy was saying something about two, but I started tuning him out by that point."

Engineer propped his hands on his hips. "Well, the only ones not back yet are Heavy and Pyro, Heavy's a big Russian fellow and Pyro is...Pyro is Pyro, you'll see whenever they get back. Don't let Heavy's size bother you though, he's big but pretty polite all things considered. And Scout's got a mouth on him, ignoring him really is the best policy for dealing with him."

Shiloh finished lacing her boots and stood, stretching. "Right... He's not the sort to be all creepy and watch me sleep or anything is he?"

Engineer shrugged. "Honestly couldn't tell you, we've never really had a woman around aside from Miss Pauling and she just does her own thing...pretty sure she sleeps in her little office if she gets stuck here too late."

"Guess I should be glad I don't sleep nu- no one here sleeps nude, right?"

"Oh no, we've got a rule against that," Engineer laughed. "Come on, dinner's getting cold and the beer's getting warm."

\-----------------------------------

"She saw your face, and now they know your face."

"Yes, sister, I am aware. I should have known better than to leave things up to those sloppy robots. I have been made a laughing stock...a fool. No one escapes me, no one."

"All the more reason to fix this. You have a job to do, brother...enough playing around."

"Yes, yes...a job to do, a reward to acquire. How many do they number, I wonder."

\-----------------------------------------

Demoman, currently still sober, nevertheless used the beer in his hand to gesture as he spoke. "Any idea why the Administrator wants her to stay here, then?"

Spy shook his head, taking a long drag off his cigarette before dropping it into the ashtray in front of him. "I have suspicions, but we have no hard facts regarding it. That she is the only survivor of a robot assault...it is unusual, yes? The first survivor we have seen, and if Sniper is to be believed she was armed only with a hammer facing off against robots that were not armed."

Engineer drained his beer, then screwed the cap back onto the empty bottle. "Are you thinking they were trying to capture her alive?"

"Among other theories, yes."

Scout snorted loudly. "So what, you think she's some sort of high-value target? She don't look so special to me."

"You're just pissed she doesn't like you," Sniper said dryly, leaning forward in his chair. "Fact of the matter is, she's stuck here whether we know why or not. Can we try not to make a big deal of it?"

"What're you, her boyfriend?" Scout smirked, throwing an arm over the back of his chair and propping a foot up on the table.

"It's Spy's and my fault she's even stuck here, least we can try to do is not drive her nuts."

"And what about her running around and getting in our way?" Soldier interjected, slamming a fist on the table. 

"Easy, Soldier. She seems pretty content to just stay out of everyone's way," Engineer replied, clapping a hand on the male's shoulder. "It's not her fault she's stuck here, and maybe someone will fill us in on why she needs to be kept here."

"Indeed." Spy reached into his suit, fingers sliding into a hidden pocket within the jacket, and pulled out a folded bit of paper. "Gentlemen, allow me to show you something." He unfolded it and smoothed the paper out on the table; it was the sketch drawing of the man from Sandville that Shiloh had drawn for Pauling. "I suspect her being kept here has something to do with this man - he was seen in Sandville with a trunk that Sniper and I were not quick enough to intercept. We do not yet know how this man fits into the recent robot rampages, but I caution everyone here to keep an eye out for him...if we figure out this connection, we can quickly move on to getting this woman out of our hair."

"Aye...t'would be easier of course if we knew where the robots would be going next, see if we could spot him then. I doubt the lass knows anything about that, does she?"

Spy shook his head. "She gave a full accounting to Miss Pauling regarding Sandville and what she knew of this man, which was little more than his description. Again, I am suspicious of why we would need to keep her here considering we already know all she knows."

"Well, maybe Heavy and Pyro had better luck than you two did," Engineer cut in. He sat his empty bottle on the table and then stood, sliding his chair back under the table's edge. "At any rate I'm turning in for the night, boys."

The remaining mercenaries continued to discuss as Engineer left, their mutterings going inaudible as the door shut behind him; he tugged goggles, hat, and glove off as he walked the hallway, then paused at the door into the barracks and peeked in. Down at the far end he could see the curled up form of Shiloh under the thin, scratchy blanket of her bunk, only the top of her head visible from where he stood - at least she'd beaten everyone to sleep and wouldn't have to worry about trying to fall asleep through Demoman's snoring.

Engineer quietly moved down the line to his own bed and pulled his boots off and slipped out of his overalls before piling everything under the bed and falling into it. The others would trickle in eventually, he knew; with it being so quiet he was asleep in no time at all, and he mentally filed away the fact of 'she doesn't snore' as one small bit of good news.


	5. Ch 5 - Dreams and Bullets

The next handful days passed uneventful - Heavy and Pyro came back (empty-handed and battered, ambushed by bots but able to handle themselves) and met Shiloh; Heavy seemed apathetic about her presence, but she wasn't able to read him very well. Pyro, on the other hand, seemed rather fascinated with her and for the first day after meeting her followed her around; he didn't say much - she could hardly understand him anyway - and instead spent most of his time sitting within sight of her, chin in his hands, while Shiloh pretended to not notice. The second day she assumed someone had said something to him because Pyro merely gave her a cheerful greeting that morning and then she didn't see him for the rest of the day.

Shiloh was, however, reaching the point of wishing Scout would follow Pyro's lead and leave her alone; she had figured out that being within Heavy or Spy's general company tended to ward the annoying male off, but after two days of hiding near them she had decided she needed to just not be anywhere Scout could see her.

And so it was one morning when Sniper was climbing the stairs up to the main tower that, as his head poked into the room, he noticed Shiloh sitting on the windowsill of the eastern window; she was barefoot (as usual, it seemed) and had rolled her pants up to her knees then crossed her legs at the ankles. A book was propped open in her lap but she was staring out the window.

"You're up early."

He'd been expecting to startle her but she only shrugged. "I apparently need to get up before Scout does to avoid him." She stuck her finger in the book and shut it gently over the digit to hold her place, turning her head to look at him. "I'm guessing this is your little nook in this place?"

Sniper nodded, coming up the last five steps fully into the room and moving toward a crate pushed up against the wall beneath the windows along the eastern wall; this tower had windows facing in all four cardinal directions, three sets per wall, Shiloh perched on one of the northeastern sills. "When we're not out on a job I'm up here, watching. Surprised you heard me coming." He lowered himself down to sit, setting the pot of coffee he'd brought up with him onto the floor at his feet so he could use both hands to remove his rifle from his back and carefully lean it against the wall beside him.

"I didn't hear you, I smelled your coffee - I knew someone was coming, just not entirely sure who. At any rate, I'll leave if my being up here bothers you."

He shrugged indifferently as he poured himself a cup. "How're you holding up?"

"I'm bored senseless and devising ways to get out of this place."

"Wouldn't recommend it, we'd be sent out after you and I can guarantee you wouldn't outpace me - shooting is the not the only thing I'm good at."

She smiled a bit at him. "Right, 'Sniper.' Been meaning to ask - why do you guys refer to one another by...what, I guess what your job is? Sniper, Spy...Heavy... I know Dell said you're not really supposed to spread your names around, but not even among yourselves?"

"The Administrator is an odd woman, has rules for this and that. For me, anyway, it's a lot easier to shout someone's job than it is their name - hard to hear in the middle of a gunfight, jobs are just easier."

"I guess that makes sense, though I do appreciate you giving me a name, makes things seem a bit more personal and not like I'm talking to a cartoon character or something."

He shrugged again and took a slow drink of coffee, turning to look out the window himself. "If I'd known I'd find you up here I would have brought a second cup."

"Don't worry about it, coffee isn't something I drink too often anyway."

"Not a fan?"

"No, it's just not readily available, not something I can just carry with me."

"You really carry everything in just a duffel and a box?"

She nodded, turning to stare out the window, letting the book fall back open and drumming her fingers on it. "I've learned to pack to take advantage of all available space, and I plan my travels so I make it from town to town to resupply."

"Wouldn't have pegged you as a hitchhiker, myself."

A thin smile worked its way across her face. "I don't, I walk it, always have. I can't tell you how many pairs of boots I've worn out."

He blinked a bit at that, then looked up at her bare feet. "Really? Then what's with running around barefoot all the time?"

She wiggled her toes briefly. "Saves wear and tear on socks and boots - if the ground is flat and soft enough, I just walk it without shoes. It's also kind of...comforting, feeling the ground under my feet." She pulled her knees up so she could reach down and scratch the top of a foot. "I go barefoot around here since it's just smooth floors and dirt, nothing rough except for the concrete outside and I'm not out on it long."

"This isn't a place I'd want to be barefoot, to be honest with you. No telling what's gone on here before we got moved in to it."

She straightened her legs back out and crossed them again at the ankles. "I'm not too concerned." 

They both fell silent, watching as the sun crept a bit higher in the sky. Sniper emptied his mug and poured a second one, his attention out the window as he did his usual morning sweep; he had the strange feeling of being watched, knowing Shiloh was in the room with him, but each time he glanced in her direction he saw she was occupied with staring out the window - he didn't even get the feeling she was stealing glances at him, either.

'Just not used to someone around,' he thought, moving around the room and looking out in all directions until the sun was streaming in through the eastern windows full force and he was squinting into light too bright to really see anything. He returned to his crate and sat his mug on the windowsill.

"How long do you plan on sitting up here?"

Shiloh twitched a bit - maybe she'd forgotten he was here? - and then shrugged, glancing from the window to him briefly before looking back outside. "I can leave now if I'm bothering you...I just wanted to get a look outside of this stupid box you've got me in."

"You're not bothering me, just thinking you didn't eat much last night and I doubt you grabbed anything before getting up here."

"I don't eat much - side-effect of having to carry all your meals with you. It at least preserves my girlish figure," she said, tone dripping in sarcasm. She went quiet then sighed. "I'll be fine for now, but thank you."

With a shrug Sniper went back to watching the horizons; he could see lone vehicles moving on the road in the far distance, and see buzzards and other carrion birds circling high above the rather featureless, flat land around them. He couldn't imagine why anyone would build a facility here where anyone within five miles could see it but...well, at the moment it was home base, and he at least was glad it was easy enough to see anything approaching it even if he did sometimes wish there was some sort of greenery to break up the monotony of flat, brown, cracked earth and rock formations everywhere.

Every movement of Shiloh's - still seated on the windowsill - tended to grab his attention, since he didn't have anything else to catch his eye, and so when Shiloh turned her head to stare at the stairwell to the tower he noticed immediately and turned to look too just in time to see Engineer's head poke into the room, preceded only by the sounds of him clunking up the stairs with a toolbox in his hand.

"Oh, huh - I was wondering where you were hiding today," was his greeting directed at Shiloh. She gave him a sort of half-wave as he came up into the tower and looked around.

"Needing something?" Sniper asked.

"Miss Pauling apparently asked Spy to ask me to look at that speaker again - nothing's wrong with it that I can find, so I'm thinking maybe there's a connector loose letting some interference in. There's a pole up here I need to check, I was hoping what I was looking for would be closer-" he gestured at the windows "-doesn't look like it though...not sure how I'm going to get out at it if I can't climb up or down to it, nothing we have will reach."

Shiloh swung her legs off the windowsill and touched down lightly on the floor. "Pole? Where at?"

Engineer gestured and then moved toward the south-facing windows. "No ladders tall enough to reach from the ground even if I put it on the roof of the building below us. Guess I'll have to rappel down from here."

Shiloh moved to the window and pressed her face against it to look to the left and down. "How wide is the pole?"

Engineer shrugged and held up his hands in an approximation. "I'd say six or eight inches wide, why?"

She began to move toward the stairs. "Is there a way to get to the pole from the roof below us?"

"Well, yeah, but why?"

She padded down the stairs a few steps, then turned to look at him. "Easier to go up than down, I'll show you."

Engineer and Sniper looked at one another for a moment, Sniper shrugging, before they both followed along; Engineer lead them to a door that let them out onto the roof at the base of the tower where it rose above the rest of the building, then lead them around the tower to where a pole came out of the roof and ran up next to the outer wall of the tower.

He pointed up to where a metal box had wires running to it. "That's it up there, just need to check if anything is loose."

"Is the power off to that thing?"

"...yes, it is. Why?" Engineer asked slowly, suspicion evident in his tone.

Shiloh rubbed the sole of her left foot on the shin of her right leg, then did the same with the other foot on the other leg, then stepped up to the pole and jumped up; she got a handhold and then set her feet, and then was several feet above their heads before either man had a chance to really react.

"I- what are you doing?!"

"What the hell are you doing? You're going to fall, you crazy-"

Shiloh continued to scale up the pole, reaching the box then bracing her feet against the wall behind the pole and wedging the fingers of her left hand behind the pole itself.

Engineer was staring upward, slowly shaking his head, shielding his eyes with a hand. "She's damn crazy... That's at least a fourteen foot drop if she falls off that."

Sniper's eyes were glued upward, staring at Shiloh's back as the woman busied herself with studying and then prodding at whatever wires and nonsense were inside that box. After what seemed like forever, she was sliding down a foot or so at a time until she dropped back to the roof and turned toward them.

She had a smirk on her face that completely negated the innocent "what?" she offered them.

"Are you nuts?" Sniper finally snapped, jabbing a finger at the pole. 

"Oh calm down, I didn't fall."

"You could have. That was mighty dangerous, Shiloh," Engineer said, still shaking his head. 

"Look, back when I actually had steady employment I had to change this big marquee - when the ladder broke and my employer was too cheap to buy another one, I still had to get up there and change the sign. This pole was actually easier to climb because it was narrow enough I could get my hands around it and rely on my feet rather than my legs to get up it." She dusted her hands off as she spoke, looking over a shoulder back at the pole. "I climbed that stupid pole to change that stupid sign a good three years or so, and this one here isn't even as tall as the one I learned on. If I can get my hands or something sturdy around it, I can climb almost anything."

Engineer was still shaking his head. "Just...let's not do that again, all right? Not without something to hold you up there."

"Fair enough. Still wanting to know what things looked like up there?" Engineer nodded, and Shiloh put her hands into her pockets as she spoke. "The coating on the wires up there is starting to dry rot - the top of that box is dented and looks like water can trickle in. Everything in there was tight, nothing loose, but there was a single connector in there that looked recently replaced, it sort of stood out."

Engineer seemed to think on that a moment, then nodded. "All right then, if nothing was loose...guess I'll see about checking a few other things. Thanks, but again - forewarning, or something, before you do that again."

She gave them both what amounted to a smirk and began to walk backward toward the door, a light spring in her step. "Just think of it as an issued challenge - if I can get up there that easily, what excuse do you have?" She disappeared through the door, leaving Sniper and Engineer on the roof staring at one another.

Finally, Sniper lifted his hat up and scratched at his head. "...I'm going to keep an even closer eye on that woman. You know what's near the gate, right?"

"Uh...wait, yeah, a light pole going right up next to it."

"Right, and she said earlier she was planning ways to get out of here. I thought she was joking, but after that-" he gestured at the pole as he turned and began trudging back toward the door "-I'm not so sure anymore."

\----------------------------------------

At first there was no answer when he pressed the buzzer beside the lab door, so Gray Mann began jabbing it repeatedly before finally holding it down and glaring daggers at the nondescript metal, once more wondering why he let such a lunatic into his-

"-yes, dear, is that you Mr. Mann?"

The pleasant female voice filtered through the speaker just above the the buzzer.

"Who else would it be?" he growled. "Where is your, ah, brother? Is he present?"

"Oh dear me, my dearest brother is sleeping. What can I help you with?"

Gray Mann's teeth ground together as he sucked in a breath. "I want to know what is taking him so long...I was promised results and he has done nothing but-"

"-dear, dear, I know, I know. My brother is a brilliant man but can be consumed with creativity...he has taken up a curious obsession, you know."

Mann bristled. "I do not care about his obsession-"

"-but you know, obsession is healthy. He needs this. He has inserted programming into your robots to target this woman and bring her back here, hmmm? How do you feel about this?"

"I want my machine and nothing else! That is all I am paying him for-"

"-ah but are you? You are accepting of the upgrades he is giving them. Should he remove them?"

"What? No! No, no no..." His breath gargled in his throat as he tried to suppress a growl. "The upgrades are...not the route I would have taken, but acceptable. This does not excuse the delay however-"

"-my dear Mr. Mann," the woman's voice dropped in volume, and he had the distinct feeling of a mother talking down to a child. "My brother is a delicate man, prone to bouts of obsession. You will have your machine, but do try to humor his oddities. In fact, I must ask a favor of you..."

"What now?" he snarled through gritted teeth.

"A small bit of programming. His obsession, this woman...he wants her brought back here, to be dispatched by his own hand. If this is done, well...his focus will be lost. He must have something to strive toward. I wish for you to override his programming, tell those robots to capture her but not bring her to him. If he is to remain focused and moving forward, he cannot achieve his goals too easily, yes?"

"I have done everything he has requested, even gone so far as to destroy my own property to hide my production facilities - admittedly, it was delightfully cathartic to destroy the objects of my brothers' senseless squabbling... -but regardless! How much longer must I wait before he delivers on what I have hired him to do?"

"Not much longer, Mr. Mann, I promise. We only lack one person to complete upgrades...locating him will considerably speed things along."

"I don't care about the upgrades, that isn't what I-"

"Consider it a perk, Mr. Mann. You will have your machine. Ta ta, I must attend."

Mann clenched his fists so tightly he felt his nails dig into his palms as the speaker let out a little crackle and went silent. "I never should have let this maniac into my factories..."

\---------------------------

The morning of Shiloh's fifth forced day at the facility found her back up in the tower with Sniper, again perched on a windowsill and watching the sun rise. Sniper nudged her arm and offered her a cup of coffe, which she silently took with a small smile.

"Were you serious, the other day?"

"Huh?" She peered at him from over the edge of the cup as she took a drink.

Sniper gestured out the window. "About trying to get out of here."

She shrugged. "Depends on how long your Administrator takes to say I can leave. The longer I'm stuck here the more tempting it's going to get. Why?"

He took a drink before answering. "Because as much effort as it took to get you here and patched up, I'd rather not have to put new holes in you."

"You'd shoot me?"

"If you give me a reason to. I really suggest not trying to run."

"And just where would I go? Nowhere to hide out here..." she said quietly. "I noticed the pole by the gate the day after that Miss Pauling told me I had to stay - and, by the way? There's two more poles and some old guttering on or near enough to a wall for me to use - but I can't get up them while carrying my things, and if you're going to shoot me in the back if I run..." She sighed heavily, running a hand through her hair and resting her forehead against the window. "I'm stuck here and I know it, and I might joke about running, but I won't."

"...good. I don't look forward to having to put a bullet in you."

"And if this Administrator just decides to have me offed? Are you going to do the honors?"

He grimaced. "No, I wouldn't. I'm not in the business of pointless killing."

"Not even if you're paid?"

When he looked at her he found she was staring at him, waiting. "Most of my targets aren't someone I know personally. If I was ever ordered to kill you, I'd...have to think long and hard on it. It's easier when they're nameless wankers at the end of my scope."

She exhaled through her nose then turned to go back to staring out the window. "Points for honesty, at least." After a moment she unfolded herself from the windowsill and headed down the stairs, leaving Sniper alone in the tower.

He took his hat off and tossed it to the ground at his feet, sighing. After a long moment he drained his mug of coffee and got up, stuffing his hat back onto his head and taking the stairs three at time; as he had been expecting he found Spy sitting in the little dark room in the warehouse.

"Has Pauling or the Administrator called yet?"

Spy shook his head, blowing out a lungful of smoke; Sniper grunted and leaned against the door frame, crossing his arms.

"This is turning into a real piece of piss... The longer she sticks us with this Shiloh the worse this is going to get."

"I see no problem with the woman's presence, has something happened?" Spy spun slowly in the chair to face Sniper, a smirk half-hidden behind the hand holding the cigarette to his lips.

Sniper pointed a finger at him. "Watch that look or you'll be scraping your face off the floor."

"Just what did she say to you, exactly?"

"If we're ordered to get rid of her, are you going to pull the trigger?"

Spy crossed his fingers in front of his face, elbows resting on the arms of the chair, and was silent for a moment. "Yes, I would. It would be, after all, merely another job. I did not think the idea of killing would upset you, Sniper...it is a side of you I am not certain I've seen."

Irritably he waved a hand. "Don't even start that. There's a bloody difference between assassinating a target and gunning down a woman who hasn't done a damn thing, especially since she wouldn't even be here if-"

"Need I remind you that if we had not brought her back she would be dead anyway? I do not understand why this should bother you now...unless you have become fond of her."

"-I like her about as much as I like you lot."

Spy let out a bark of a laugh. "In that case it's a wonder you haven't shot her on your own already."

Sniper's response was cut off as at that moment the phone began to ring; the two men looked at one another before Spy turned to answer it, leaving Sniper to stare at the door frame, waiting.

Spy quietly spoke into the phone for a few moments before hanging up, turning and standing in one smooth motion. "It would seem we gentlemen have a job, let us gather the others and plan, shall we?"

Spy brushed passed him, heading out into the dim warehouse, then paused to look over a shoulder at Sniper. "Perhaps a day or two away from here will give you some clarity."

Sniper grunted and moved to plod after him; clarity...right. Like he'd just said, there was a big difference between taking out targets and gunning down an innocent woman.


	6. Ch 6 - Ambush

Not long after the phonecall Miss Pauling had arrived; Spy had managed to round everyone up and had them waiting in the mess hall, all of them seated around the tables when Pauling walked in. She had glanced around the room, complimented them on gathering so quickly, then dumped an armload of maps onto the poker table and began to sort through them.

"Have you explained anything, Spy?"

Spy shook his head. "No, not yet. We have only just gathered, I shall let you do the honors Miss Pauling." 

She pulled a rolled up map out of the pile and opened it, spreading it out (with those close enough holding down curling corners) and then began to mark on it with a large red marker.

"After I showed the Administrator that picture Shiloh drew, she said she knew the man and would contact me. I don't know the specifics behind any of this, but she's found him-" She continued to mark as she talked, circling, marking out, and drawing lines between a handful of tiny, middle-of-nowhere cities south of their facility. "This man was seen in each of these cities, on the outskirts - these towns were destroyed by the robots, and he apparently was watching from the outside. He's traveling in-" she paused and pulled a much smaller rolled bit of paper and opened it to show it was actually paper printouts of grainy photographs, like still frames taken from security tapes. "-this truck here." 

She placed a scratchy black and white photo of a sleek black box-truck into the middle of the map. "And, we think we know where he's about to hit next. We need to beat him there and take care of him."

One slim finger tapped on the final city she had circled; it was labeled Redstone, and actually looked to be sizable on the map compared to the little dots that were Sandville and others.

"And what's our plan, then?" Demo spoke up. "We race him there, gun him down when he gets there?"

"That will be up to you, boys," Pauling said. "We're counting on you to do what you do best - I'll be staying behind to keep an eye on our guest and keep communications open between you and the Administrator. Shoot him, blow him up, whatever you choose to do, just make sure you get rid of him and aren't seen doing it."

"How long do we have?" Sniper asked, moving to stand.

"If you leave now you have a four hour drive, and you should reach Redstone two hours before this man possibly could, based on where he was last seen."

Sniper nodded at that. "Could set up an ambush on the road, avoid the problem of being seen."

"Aye, let's get moving lads." Demo stood and followed Sniper out from the mess hall, the rest of the mercenaries following as the two lead the way into the eastern buildings and to the storage room they used as their armory. It didn't take long for them all to arm and supply themselves before they then headed for the warehouse and their small fleet of vehicles.

\--------------------------------

The bathroom door creaked slightly behind her but Shiloh didn't even look up from where she was hunched over one of the sinks, the bloodstained shirt she'd been wearing in Sandville in her hands and the faucet letting a steady trickle of water fall onto the fabric as the woman carefully rubbed and scrubbed at the stains.

"Miss MacKenna, Shiloh, I need to speak with you a moment."

"Then start talking, I can still hear you," Shiloh replied, finally lifting her head to look into the mirror over the sink, able to see the reflection of Miss Pauling by the door.

"I thought we could go somewhere to sit. I would prefer that, actually."

With a sigh Shiloh began wringing the soap and water out of the shirt. "Fine, just...give me a moment..." She spread the shirt out over one of the other sinks to dry, then dried her hands off on a towel as she turned around. "What seems to be the problem now?"

Miss Pauling gestured and stepped outside, Shiloh following a moment later, and then both woman stood and listened to the fading sound of engine noise and the groaning of the gate as it slid shut once more.

"There isn't a problem, I was just told to fill you in more on what is happening and why you're stuck here, if you're interested?"

"I'm interested in anything that'll get me out of here."

Pauling led the way into the mess hall then seated herself at the poker table, waiting for Shiloh to drop into a chair across from her before speaking. "Right, so...the Administrator contacted me, asking me to pass along what I'm about to tell you. She's...not a very sympathetic woman, and she heard some discussion in the warehouse room that - well, that part isn't important, I guess. The fact is, we don't want you running and it's not just for our benefit either."

Pauling pressed her fingertips together in front of her face, then laced them together and leaned forward. "The man you saw is someone the Administrator knows, and is someone she's been trying to eliminate for some time - she didn't say how long - but she said he's a vain, proud man, someone who doesn't leave jobs undone. Based on you reporting that those Soldierbots were unarmed we're assuming they were trying to take you alive. There's a high possibility this man may come after you to finish things and she needs you where she can find you and, as a result, find him."

Shiloh was silent, listening, and then into the pause that followed that she sighed heavily and kicked a chair leg. "So I'm bait for some maniac, is that it?"

"Pretty much. If the men get him tonight you'll be free to go in the morning, but as it stands right now we need you and really? There's a much smaller chance of you being murdered if you just stay here."

"Can I ask why she thought to wait until I was good and pissed at being trapped here before she gave me a reasonable answer as to why I'm trapped here?"

"I don't think she's used to anyone really questioning her orders, or maybe she thought you'd just sit and take it without complaint - I can't really say, she's not really an open person. I can say she doesn't seem happy that Spy and Sniper were discussing your situation - that's the uh, conversation that was overheard. I'd suggest trying not to get attached to anyone here."

Shiloh shrugged. "They should be taking up for me, they're the ones who dragged me here in the first place." She slid the chairs around until she could prop her feet up on one, propping her left elbow up on the table and then resting her head against that hand. "Where were they all going, anyway? Is this guy really that close to here?"

"They're going hunting, and yes, he is. Like I said, if they get him tonight you'll be free by tomorrow."

"I'm guessing you stayed behind to make sure your stray dog doesn't wander off."

Pauling pushed her glasses up. "That's part of it, the other is keeping communication lines open. Can I expect you'll behave?"

"Sure, but only because there seems to be a light at the end of this tunnel."

\---------------------------------

They had spent some of their extra time scouting the area around Redstone; it was a decent-sized town with a population of around seven thousand if the roadsigns were to be believed. The town itself was built near a natural spring and was actually cut in half by the stream the spring produced; it wasn't a bustling town but it seemed expansion was carefully monitored to keep pollution in check and to not over-tax their water supply.

The road that led into Redstone wound its way through a sizable rock formation; there was a stretch of road about a quarter of a mile long that went through the rock, with the blasted and chiseled walls rising almost twenty feet above the road's surface. Built in next to where the rock formation began was an old, abandoned gas station; it had the look of having been unused for easily a decade, and the tanks that had once held fuel were completely bone dry. It was here the mercenaries decided to set up their ambush: the gas station would provide somewhere to hide, and with the tall walls on either side of the road it would be a lot harder for someone to shoot up than it would be for them to shoot down.

Spy sorted the men out: Sniper was to head up the rocks and find a hidden place where he'd have the best chance at simply taking the driver out; Engineer, Pyro, Heavy, and Scout were to wait inside the gas station and wait to see if Sniper could make the shot; Demoman was hiding sticky bombs along the walls, halfway up the road, in case the man in the truck decided to floor it to try and brute-force his way through the ambush; Soldier was on top of the wall at the furthest end of the road, there to obliterate the truck with his rockets if somehow, by some miracle, the truck made it that far. Medic was tucked away behind the gas station, ready to dash out if needed...everyone was in position.

Spy himself was down on the ground, down toward the Redstone side of the rock formation; if absolutely everything else failed he would be there to either try and finish off the man himself or would attempt to at least cripple the truck by shooting the tires. In all honesty he did not expect the truck to even reach the gas station - Sniper's skill with long distance shots was exceptional and he had not known the man to miss so simple a shot in all the time he'd worked with him. Spy did, however, like to try and have a plan for everything.

He checked his watch; if Pauling's information on travel time had been correct, the truck should be approaching any minute now. With a deft flick he sent he remains of his cigarette into a crack in the rocks nearby then drew his revolver and waited, then smiled a bit as he heard the crack of Sniper's rifle.

And then he heard a second shot. He frowned, but before he could move forward to peer down the road he heard the scuff of a boot on dirt and whirled around to see a man standing barely a foot away - THE man, the one that should have been in the truck. Before he could bring his gun to bear, or cloak, or do much more than gag on the revolting stench of the male, the man had raised a hand and something silver on his palm glinted.

\------------------------------------

Soldier grinned as he heard Sniper's shot, then frowned as he heard the second...and then came a third. It wasn't like Sniper to miss, maybe the truck had bulletproof glass? If some, maybe the truck was reinforced elsewhere and he'd get to do something after all if it made it to him.

He knelt down and steadied his elbow on the rock beside him, waiting, and then caught a whiff of something...bad. Really bad. There was a slight breeze up here, the road through the rock creating a natural wind tunnel, and something absolutely stunk below him. Maybe there was roadkill somewhere beneath him-

-wait, no, he could hear a soft voice below him now, one that wasn't French.

He stood up and tilted his head, listening, grinding his teeth together. This was not part of the plan, he didn't like it when a plan didn't happen like it should. Creeping along the rocks, Soldier made it back over to where he'd climbed up and then looked down.

Below him was a man in a wide-brimmed hat, dressed in dark blue, that seemed to have Spy by the neck. The man in the hat was talking softly, and Spy was clawing at his own throat.

"HEY, that is OUR Spy-"

The man looked up even as Soldier leaped at him, boots-first. Somehow the man moved faster than Soldier could fall and he slammed into the place where the man had just been an instant ago; Soldier spun, searching for the man, and blinked when he saw the man was now up on the rocks where Soldier had just jumped from.

"Teleporting is cheating, soldier!" he shouted, lifting his launcher and going to fire. In the span of a blink however the man was gone again, leaving Soldier staring in confusion at the empty space. "What is going on here?"

Beside him Spy crumpled, still clawing at his throat with his mouth opening and closing silently. 

"Now is not the time for suffocating, Spy. There is an enemy on the loose! Wh-"

Soldier stopped and swung his launcher around as movement in his peripheral vision grabbed his attention; suddenly the man was right on top of him, a hand wearing a silver gauntlet jabbing for Soldier's head. Soldier ducked and pressed the business end of the launcher into the man's gut, and then again, the man was simply gone.

"Get back here and fight like a man! I am going to enjoy killing you and will regret I can only do it once!" 

He spared Spy a glance, noting the male was laying on the ground staring glassy-eyed into the sky but sucking in weak breaths; for the moment, Soldier was alone in this fight and frankly? That's how he liked it.

\----------------------------------------

Sniper had sighted in on the truck the moment he could spy it coming toward them; outside of his scope it was maybe the size of a six-sided die, with his scope to his eye it was considerably easier to pick out the details of the truck - it was black and glossy, looked brand new, but he frowned when he saw the windows were also black...tinted, then, and he couldn't see the driver.

'Probably should have asked how tall he was,' he thought to himself, letting the scope fall from his eye a moment to glance down toward the gas station and give it a thumb's up - he couldn't see his teammates hiding there, but he knew at least Engineer was supposed to be watching for confirmation of sighting their target. 

Right, so...if he didn't know how tall his target was and he couldn't see the man through the tinted windshield, he couldn't assume he'd easily take him in one shot; he could miss if the man was shorter than he thought, or if he aimed too low he'd only wound the man - admittedly wounding him wasn't a major concern, they would finish this one way or another, but if Sniper could end this with a single bullet, all the better.

"Stupid bloody wanker," he muttered, bringing his scope up again. "Couldn't just make this easy, could you..." He took aim, tracking the truck's forward progress, then when he was certain he had the best angle to at least get his target in where he hoped the throat was, he squeezed the trigger.

Through the scope he could see the windshield take the shot...and nothing happened beyond spidery cracks snaking their way across its surface. The truck didn't even swerve or show any indication he'd even startled its driver. He was already loading a second round, swearing quietly, then lined up again and shot a second time; again the window withstood the shot.

"What in the bloody hell..."

He had a third shot loaded, aimed, and fired as the truck began to slow on its approach; this shot finally punched through the window, but through the fist-sized hole it made Sniper couldn't see the driver.

Maybe this wouldn't be so simple after all.

\--------------------------------------

"Three shots. Three freaking shots. I thought this guy didn't miss."

Engineer was pressed against the wall and eased himself forward to look out of the dusty, cracked gas station window. "He doesn't, which means get ready because our target is still heading right for us."

"All right, all right, so when this truck gets here, Heavy you kick the door open and I'll be right out behind you," Scout went on, twirling his pistol by the trigger guard. "Try not to block the doorway and make it look good - let's scare the crap out of this guy before we put some holes in him. I need some payback for making me have to ride in a truck so long with you chucklenuts."

"...it's slowing down," Engineer said quietly, scooting back from the window and, walking in a crouch, moving back to his toolbox. "Get ready, boys."

Heavy moved closer to the door, nodding silently; Scout stepped up behind him, giving his pistol one more spin on his finger before swapping it out for the scattergun on his back. "Let's do this. It's one guy, how hard could this be? I could do this in my sleep."

Engineer locked fingers around the handle of his toolkit, then raised the other hand slowly, very carefully raising himself up just enough to get a look out the window once more...then he gestured with the raised hand: pointer and middle finger together, forward twice toward the door - go, now.

Heavy swung his gun back as he suddenly charged forward, slamming his shoulder into the door - the rotten wood of the frame gave way and Heavy came bursting through the doorway, gun spinning up with a whirring scream of machinery.

The truck was coasting to a gentle stop, friction bringing it to a halt, when Heavy let loose a storm of bullets into the vehicle; they ripped into the front fender of the truck, then swept back into the cab as Heavy moved, thoroughly raking the entire front half of the truck in a hail of lead.

Behind him Scout came rushing out but skidded to a stop, giving Heavy an annoyed look but not rushing into the stream of bullets; Engineer exited next, throwing down the little kit that automatically begin assembling a small sentry gun. Between Heavy's minigun and Engineer's sentry, the cab of the truck was reduced to a twisted mess of metal and glass, full of holes and smoking.

And, most importantly, devoid of any signs of having had a driver.

There was a clatter of rocks as Sniper came sliding down the wall, dropping to the ground and raising his rifle to keep it trained on the truck wreckage. "Was he in there?"

"I do not see a body. Or blood," Heavy said, keeping the barrel of his gun spinning slowly and approaching the truck with the weapon at the ready.

"Yeah, I don't see nothing. Think he ducked into the back of the truck?"

"How'd he steer? He didn't go off course," Sniper said, rifle still trained on the truck though he remained where he was. "He couldn't have gotten into the back and not left anything to steer."

Scout hefted his scattergun and began moving toward the back of the truck. "Doesn't make sense but not having a driver don't make any sense either." When he was within a few feet of the truck's back doors there was a boom from further down the road; Scout paused and he - along with Heavy and Sniper - looked in that direction.

"That sound like rocket," Heavy said, eyes narrowing.

"What's there for Soldier to shoot? This guy couldn't have gotten behind us-"

The truck's walls suddenly rippled like water, and then exploded outward. Scout shielded his face with his arms with a muffled "aw crap!'

The truck's walls fell away and packed tightly together within them were robots - they were dull gray trimmed in chrome, and began to neatly step away from one another and drop down to the ground: Soldierbots, Demobots, Scoutbots - there were about fifteen of them total, all armed and with all sets of glowing eyes settling squarely on Heavy and Scout.

"Aw crap!" Scout shouted again, backpedaling as the Scoutbots open-fired.


	7. Ch 7 - Aftermath

From behind the gas station came Medic, charging forward with his medigun out and already spitting out a brilliant red shield that snapped into place moments before Scout and Heavy both would have been torn to shreds as the Scoutbots and Soldierbots let loose; the barrel of his minigun was all that jutted out from the shield as Heavy spun it up and began spraying bullets back at the robots.

Pyro and Scout were then suddenly flanking him, Scout firing as fast as he could reload and pull the trigger, and with Pyro using targeted air blasts to send the incoming pipe bombs flying off in harmless directions. Under their combination onslaught - with Sniper picking his shots from where he was pressed against the rock wall - three of the Scoutbots went down, with the others seeming no worse for wear despite the bullets slamming into their metal forms.

After the first Scoutbots fell the remaining robots abruptly spread out, trying to get around the edge of Medic's shield; the mercenaries began to slowly back up to try and keep the robots in front of them, the Engineer's sentry gun finally adding to the return fire even as the male hurried to attached the mini launcher to its top. 

"It is too much!" Medic shouted over the gunfire. "The shield will fail in moments!"

"Get to cover, Doctor! Behind me and ready charge!"

\---------------------------------------------------

Soldier had long since put his launcher down and pulled his shotgun and shovel free; any time he managed to get the dark-clothed man in his sights he had simply disappeared and reappeared within punching range, and he seemed exceptionally determined to strike Soldier with that weird silver gauntlet.

"You listen to me you maggot!" he screeched into the empty air as once again the man teleported away. "You will stand still and I will kill you! Do not make this harder on yourself, son!"

The man, as usual, appeared behind him and Soldier spun to deflect away the man's strike. "You impede me," the man said softly. His voice was low and gargled, like he had a mouthful of water. "You may walk away if you deliver to me the woman, and the man in the suit. I require them."

"That is our Spy and I am not handing him or our woman to anyone - you are wasting my time and I do not appreciate that!" Soldier swung with his shovel at the man and managed to just clip the brim of his hat with the swing; the man's face moved in an imitation of a smile before he faded from view. "Damn it! Stop doing that!"

Soldier spun, expecting the man to appear behind him again, but instead found nothing behind him, or around him at all. Had the man finally just teleported away? Teleporters weren't that long-range, or at least the ones he was used to weren't; that man had to be around here somewhere, and by god Soldier was going to find him.

...right after he made sure Spy was at least still brea-

His thoughts ground to a halt, as did his movement toward Spy, when the man was suddenly back and almost in his face, the fingers of that gauntlet ripping through Soldier's right sleeve and into the bicep beneath it in an instant; Soldier swung with his offhand and slammed the edge of the shovel into the man's face, sending him staggering back and then scrambling back as Soldier rushed at him with the intent to tackle.

His arm felt weird, though...numb, sort of. And his hand wasn't listening to the orders he was giving it - the entire limb in fact seized up suddenly enough that his own hand about hit himself in the face as his arm's muscles contracted. It was uncomfortable, painful, and that man's gauntlet had somehow done it, and now Soldier couldn't even fire his shotgun; the weapon now hung from its strap at his side, partly pinned against his ribcage with his own unresponsive elbow.

"Hyaaargh!" Soldier launched himself fully at the man, his good arm extended and with the shovel tightly clenched in it; the man raised his other hand, the one without the gauntlet - a heavy, ornate ring with a turquoise-colored jewel and an inner glow, like a tiny light bulb, was prominent and prominently pointed at the leaping male.

Soldier's forward progress immediately halted and then he found himself hurtling backwards to slam shoulder blades-first into the edge of the rock wall with the air blasted out of his lungs with the impact. With a groan Soldier rolled over to push himself to his feet; his arm still wasn't working, and he'd dropped his shovel when he'd hit the rock. He could see the man approaching him at a slow walk as he tried to find his feet and his shovel, and then the man was tumbling away as a glass bottle struck him in the face and shattered, sending scrumpy everywhere.

"Suck on THAT you prancin' nancy!"

Demoman dropped down from the wall above Soldier, stumbling a bit on loose rock but regaining his footing and leveling his grenade launcher at the prone figure of the man; he had fallen onto his back, his stupid hat covering his face, shoved there from the impact of his fall. Coughing and sputtering could be heard faintly from under the hat as Demoman stalked slowly toward the man, Soldier finally finding his feet and looking about for his shovel.

Now that he wasn't focusing entirely on the man Soldier could hear what sounded like one hell of a gunfight echoing up the road; the others were actually fighting something that probably was standing still, easily hit, and not teleporting around like a stupid cheater. He envied them and cursed his useless limb - there were things that needed shooting, and here he was stuck with just a shovel and a headache.

"-what the bloody hell?"

As before, the man simply disappeared; Demoman blinked at the empty space a moment, then fired three bombs into it - all three struck the ground and exploded, leaving behind no traces of a dead man, or even proof that anything but dirt and rock had been there at all.

"He is cheating, he is teleporting around. He can't have gone far - let's find this maggot and send him to hell."

Demoman turned, looking Soldier up and down a moment. "Looks like you got the stuffing beat out of you, lad. What's with your arm?"

Soldier used his good hand to grasp the wrist of his other and tried, unsuccessfully, to forcefully wrench the injured arm straight again. "I cannot straighten my arm."

"I'm not hunting with you with that, go find our Medic and have it put to rights. I'll find this-" Demoman's attention had finally found Spy, still laying where he'd collapsed. "What the bloody hell did one man DO to you?"

"I told you, he was cheating."

Demoman opened his mouth to reply, then tilted his head at the road. "...sounds like the lads are having a round up there. Get him and get back to Medic, I'm going to find this scrumpy-wasting cheating bastard and then come join the fun with the rest of you."

Grumbling but not arguing, Soldier shuffled over to Spy and awkwardly lifted him with his good arm; the Frenchman hung limply against the male, not even recognizing that he'd been moved, still weakly breathing and staring blankly at the ground.

"What happened to him anyway?"

"The man with the hat had him by the throat with the same hand that made my arm stop working."

Demoman gave Soldier a look - the sort of look that had a capital L and all but screamed 'are you an idiot?' at its recipient. "And you just left him laying there?"

"I was busy."

"C'mon, the man will have to wait until we can get him as a team." Demoman came over and looped an arm under Spy's to help Soldier carry him. "He won't make it far."

\---------------------------------------------

"And what the bloody hell happened here?"

Soldier and Demo, with Spy suspended between them - and still unresponsive - had just come up the road; the gunfight ahead of them had died down, the two mercenaries hurrying as best they could manage while carrying what amounted to dead weight, and now that they were down the road and near the gas station they could survey the aftermath of the gunfight.

There were bots everywhere - or, more accurately, pieces of robots everywhere. Pyro was seated with his flamethrower across his lap, staring intently into the burning wreckage of a robot; near him both Heavy and Engineer were applying a splint to Medic's leg, the German grimacing and with his entire front half soaked to the skin in blood. The medigun was laying next to him, backpack and all, and it was strange to see the man not using it. Heavy and Engineer were bloodied, bruised, and sweaty, but whatever wounds they might have gotten were already seen to.

Engineer looked up from tying off the splint as the three approached. "What got you boys? Is Spy even alive?"

Demoman eased the unconscious Frenchman to the ground next to the medigun. "Not even sure, the man in the hat got him with something. Soldier, too - his arm's buggered. Can you fix 'em up, Doc?"

Medic shook his head, hissing through his teeth as he resettled his leg on the ground. "No...I cannot. Not right now - the medigun is overtaxed, overheated. It needs recharging or we risk destroying inner components."

"Where's our Sniper?" Engineer asked, glancing up toward the road and the wall where the man had been during the gunfight - or at least that's the last place he remembered seeing Sniper standing.

"We thought he was with you."

"No, he was standing over there in the road...shit," Engineer grunted. "Fine time to be out of sight."

"I'm up here you bloody idiots," came the faint but audible response from Sniper. It was getting dark and so the male wasn't immediately visible against the rock above them, but there was a shuffling and clattering as loose rock fell and struck the road, and then Sniper's silhouette could be seen against the sky. "This is it - there's nothing else around. The man's gone, if he was even here to begin with."

"Oh he was here," Demo snorted. 

"He was here and he has pissed me off," Soldier growled. "Running and teleporting like a coward...I will kill him and enjoy doing it. Fix my arm, Doc."

Medic shot him an annoyed glance. "I just said-"

"-I'm going to disarm my stickies," Demo interrupted. "Can't be blowing up the civilians. I think we're done here tonight, boyos."

Sniper came scaling back down the rocks, plodding over to stand with the others; the remains of the truck were scattered across the ground and almost unrecognizable as having been a vehicle, interspersed with segments that had once formed robots. They'd made a mess and had nothing to show for it except for bloodstains and empty casings littering the ground.

Feeling a tickle against his cheek Sniper raised a hand to scratch at it and came away with fingertips coated in blood and fine dirt - something had opened up a deep gash across the bridge of his nose that dipped down below his left eye and he hadn't even noticed in the midst of the chaos. A quick pat down found that he wasn't injured anywhere else beyond some bruising, most likely acquired from clambering up and down the damn rocks.

He then looked his teammates over; they were all alive, so that was something at least. Engineer went to bring their truck around as Heavy supported Medic with Sniper and Demo supporting a still unresponsive Spy; there was a long drive ahead of them back to base, he hoped Spy would continue breathing that long to make it back.

\----------------------------------

The sun was rising when they limped their way back to their base and even though he was visibly exhausted, pained, and limping on what Sniper assumed was a broken leg, Medic set to the task of using conventional first aid to tend to the rest of them, instructing Heavy on how to hook up the medigun so it could recharge its inner cells.

He wasn't sure when they appeared but suddenly Miss Pauling and Shiloh were among them; Miss Pauling was attempting to get an idea of what had happened out of Soldier, Demo, and Engineer, and to his surprise Shiloh stepped up beside Medic and asked where she'd be most useful. It ended up with Medic instructing her on cleaning out cuts and removing anything that shouldn't be there, with her starting on removing shards of metal from Scout's chest and hip as the male laid on a cot in the corner and for once had nothing to say but an occasional grunt of pain.

Earlier, shortly after packing into the truck, whatever had caused Soldier's arm to seize up had released which gave them a bit of hope that Spy's breathing would even out if given time; as it was, all they could really do for the man at the moment was settle him into the one bed in the infirmary and keep a close eye on him. Miss Pauling had made it a point to conduct her conversation with Demo and Soldier right next to Spy's sickbed, and the three of them hardly looked up as Shiloh moved over to Soldier and began carefully cleaning up the gouges in his shoulder.

She had steadily worked her way from man to man, with Soldier being the last one she'd reached before finally coming to him; Sniper held up a hand to stop her.

"I'm fine, don't need it."

"Have you looked in a mirror? Sit down and at least let me check there's nothing stuck in this."

With a sigh, Sniper hooked a foot under a stool near the wall and dragged it toward him before sitting down and looking over toward Spy and the others (conveniently moving his face from Shiloh's hands in the process). "How is he?"

She grabbed his chin and firmly made him face forward again, then began to lightly dab at the crusted and congealed blood around the gash across the bridge of his nose. "Breathing still. His neck is one big bruise...looks terrible, but he's not dead and your Medic doesn't think he'll die now. I...take it you guys didn't get the man?"

Sniper shook his head and Shiloh again grabbed him by the chin to hold him still. "He got away, messed up Spy and Soldier pretty good - Soldier couldn't even move that arm at first. He was saying something about how the guy was able to just teleport all over, and then when Demoman joined in the man just poofed away like a damn spook." He grit his teeth as Shiloh used a pair of slender tweezers to extract a very small pebble from beside his nose. "It's like he knew we were going after him...the truck was a trap, and how'd he sneak up on Spy like that? Spy is the hardest person I know of to sneak up on, and teleporting isn't silent."

She made a noise of acknowledgement and didn't reply beyond that, carefully and steadily cleaning grit and dirt out of the gash until she carefully begin pressing the torn edges of the gash together. "I think this would require stitches normally, if you didn't have access to a magic gun that fixes things," she said, lower lip gently held between her teeth as she tried to ease the skin a bit more together. "I don't think it's going to stop bleeding otherwise."

"Since when did you become a doctor?" he snorted, though it came out sounding more sarcastic than he'd intended.

"Ha ha," came the response, along with a frown. "I know some first aid, thanks, just mine is more along the lines of 'oh crap I fell off a cliff and shattered my ankles, now what?' I know enough about cleaning and bandaging to handle this." She took a few steps away to pick up a cotton pad from the little rolling table the Medic was pushing around as he followed behind her to pick up where she'd left off; Sniper found her grabbing his wrist and shoving the pad into it. "Here, hold that to it, I'm going to see if Medic has anything else I'm capable of."

"Right. Uh...thanks," he muttered, pressing the bandage to his face as instructed as she stepped away to wash her hands and then stood at Medic's side, talking quietly to him.

After sitting there for some time - he wasn't sure how long, as the face of his watch had been smashed in at some point - at last Medic began going around with the medigun; he seemed to be using the bare minimum to get them functional again, closing up the worst of their injuries and leaving the rest bandaged until they could be fully tended to - as it was, Medic wasn't even bothering trying to mend his leg yet, leaving Sniper to guess that maybe Medic really shouldn't be using his medigun at the moment, but...well, he supposed the doctor knew his own tools better than anyone else.

The gash across his nose and cheek mended fairly quickly, a good thing as the adrenaline rush from the gunfight had long since worn off and the mending process stung like a bitch once Medic finally got to him. One by one the mercenaries began to head out of the room, some more quickly than others depending on where and how many bruises they had, but seemingly in no time at all the only ones left in the infirmary were Sniper, Medic, Spy, and Pauling.

Miss Pauling and Medic were talking in quiet tones when Sniper walked up behind them, and Miss Pauling immediately turned to grab his arm and pull him toward the door.

"I need your account of what happened during the gunfight, I know you won't embellish it needlessly."

Tired and not willing to argue at this point Sniper allowed himself to be dragged from the infirmary, giving Miss Pauling what amounted to the short version of the fight. "-and I don't like it, not one bit. It's like he knew we'd be there, waiting for him."

"That IS alarming," Miss Pauling said, her free hand fidgeting with her glasses, adjusting and readjusting them on her face. "I don't see how this man could have known... And it raises more questions that we don't have answers for."

"Ain't that the truth... Where do we even go from here?"

"I don't know, not yet. You guys are some of the best men out there, and this guy tossed two of you around like dolls and duped the rest of you. I don't think I like not knowing what you're up against...we do at least have something this man is looking for, however. He won't go to ground while we've got a target for him.

At mention of 'target' he had a sudden, niggling thought in the back of his mind of something being missing. "Where'd she go anyway?"

Miss Pauling stopped mid-step, Sniper awkwardly pulled to a stop with her. "What do you mean? Wasn't she in the infirmary?"

Sniper thought a moment. "I didn't see her in there as we left, but if this wanker is still out and about and looking to kill her I doubt we want to let her out of our sight for any reason."

"I'm right here..." Pauling and Sniper turned as Shiloh rounded the corner, drying her hands on a towel; her arms from her fingers to her forearms were bright red - freshly scrubbed, by the looks of it - and there were droplets of water dripping to the floor off her elbows. "Or do I need to ask permission next time I need to use the bathroom?" 

"Where are you going now?" Miss Pauling asked, blowing out a sigh.

Shiloh nodded her head toward the infirmary door. "Back in there, to help Medic plug that gun of his back in - he's not in any shape to be doing heavy lifting. Before you ask - no, I'm not going to be running anywhere, since it seems like you fine gentlemen are the only things that're going to keep me from a heaping helping of 'murdered.' ...and it's kind of in my best interest to be as helpful as possible since I guess I'm here for the long haul." She cleared her throat and dried off her elbows. "I'd like to speak to you in private later however, Miss Pauling."

"Later, then," Miss Pauling agreed, then turned to look up at Sniper. "I'm going to call the Administrator, make sure everyone gets some rest in case she sends you all back out again - and Shiloh?"

"Yeah?"

"Be careful, try to stay within sight of someone, all right?"

"Considering the circumstances that sort of goes without saying."

Miss Pauling hurried off down the hallway, disappearing out the door that led outside, leaving Sniper and Shiloh standing in the hallway. Shiloh sighed, then offered him a weak smile. "Seems like you fellows have adopted this stray dog for the time being."

Sniper shook his head, lifting his hat to scratch above his forehead. "I'm sorry, getting you tied up in this."

She shrugged again, silent for a moment before shaking her head. "The way I see it I'd be dead either way. I hate being stuck in one place too long, but it's better than being stuck in a pine box." She brushed passed him, heading back toward the infirmary. "You should probably do as Miss Pauling said and get some rest, I'll stay with Medic in the meantime."

He turned to watch her walk, waiting until she'd gone through the infirmary door, before he plodded down the hallway in the other direction, heading for the barracks. Most times he didn't sleep in this bed, preferring to utilize his van, but at the moment the thought of being caught out alone in a small and cramped space didn't appeal to him.

Caught out alone... Had they been followed? The idea hadn't even occurred to him until just now, but it made a lot of sense - this man had somehow known they were coming, what if he'd somehow tracked them to their base.

...rest, he'd been told. Hell no, there'd be no rest today. 

Sniper abruptly turned from the barracks and hurried to get to the main watch tower.

\-------------------------------

"I am surprised you possessed the skills required to assist me."

Shiloh huffed some as she stood on her tiptoes to clip the medigun into its bracket above the surgical table. "And why - heh - is that?" She finally got the latch the closed and lowered herself off her toes, blowing out a breath as blood and sensation rushed back into her hands as she lowered them. 

"Few know or care about such manners." Medic was easing himself up onto the table, grimacing, and Shiloh moved around to offer an arm for him to brace himself against. "Fewer still are willing to apply them."

"Like I said, I know some things about first aid. I kind of have to, since I'm out on my own a lot and there aren't any hospitals in the desert or out in the woods. There's going to be some things I can't handle, obviously, but cleaning something out? Even an idiot ought to know how to clean a cut."

Finally up on the table, Medic began to undo the splint around his leg, with Shiloh reaching the straps down near his ankle. "The assistance was appreciated, regardless. You made my job considerably easier and more quickly completed. Grab my pantleg, there."

Shiloh did as he instructed and grabbed his pantleg, then with her lifting near his foot and him supporting himself near his knee, they carefully lifted up his leg and Shiloh slid the splint out from under it.

"Now...there are two levers on the side of the bracket, one controls vertical movement and the other horizontal. I require you to loosen them until you can angle the medigun to my leg."

Shiloh moved back around to the other side of the table and found the levers in question, manipulating them until she could almost freely swing the medigun down and get it adjusted so it was pointing at Medic's knee. "Like this?"

"Gut, now throw the switch - see it there, under the handle?" Medic pointed as he laid back on the table, and Shiloh obediently flipped the switch.

As before, when Shiloh had been on the business end of the medigun, the barrel spat out a brilliant flare of red light that coalesced into a beam; she saw Medic stiffen, saw him grit his teeth, as the beam hit his leg and the energy sank into his limb. She winced as there was a crackling noise - the bone mending, she assumed - and then the Medic was gesturing for her to turn the gun off.

She did so, and maneuvered it back out of the way as Medic stood, carefully putting weight down on his newly healed leg.

"Ja, this will do. Now we see to our Spy."

Shiloh looked over to the other side of the room where Spy was laying limp in a bed, then back up to where the medigun was hanging from the bracket. "...are we moving him, or moving the gun?"

"Gun."

She gave him an annoyed look. "I just got this thing up here you son of a bitch."

Medic's grin in response was part amused, part sinister. "Yes, and now we move it again."

Her look in response was scathing, but she set about unclipping the latches and lowering the medigun from the bracket once more; Medic at least came around to take the gun and the accompanying backpack from her once she had gotten it down, leaving her to watch as he checked all the connectors and reassembled everything. Grumbling quietly she then followed him over to Spy and watched in silence as the unconscious male was treated with the red energies.

"How does that thing work, anyway?"

"It interacts with the body on a molecular level, as the most simple of explanations."

"And why does it hurt?"

Medic pulled the handle back on the gun, momentarily stopping the energy flow so he could lean down to peer at the Frenchman's neck. "Adrenaline is an excellent pain blocker without interfering with the healing process. Adrenaline itself is very fascinating - it is often the key to seemingly superhuman feats of strength and endurance. I have studied it extensively and still it surprises me."

Shiloh crossed her arms. "...so why did it hurt when you used it on me? Because I wasn't hopped up on adrenaline?"

"Precisely." 

"I'll keep that in mind for next time." She edged up behind the doctor, looking over his shoulder down at Spy.

It was the first time she'd seen him unmasked, noting he was older than she'd initially thought, with a touch of gray hair at his temples. His neck was a solid mass of purplish bruises, from just beneath his chin down to his collarbone; his breathing was still shallow but was at least steady, though the male had yet to awaken.

"I wish I had witnessed what had assaulted our Spy," the Medic commented absently. "Soldier had said he was being throttled by the neck, but the bruising is too even - there are no individual finger marks, nor marks where the fingertips were. Bruising is consistent with solid object having been wrapped around his throat, but that does not match Soldier's accounting."

"Could he have gotten something around Spy's neck?"

"Doubtful. Soldier said Spy was facing his assailant and I sincerely doubt our Spy would have permitted someone to seize him by the neck if he were looking at them."

Shiloh watched as the Medic again brought the medigun to bear; the bruising was slowly losing its angry purple hue and was fading out to a greenish yellow, and as the bruises faded Spy's face seemed to relax and, with a loud inhale, his eyes fluttered open.

His voice was barely above a whisper, only his eyes moving, first from Medic and then to Shiloh. "Où suis-je...?"

"Light, fetch the light," Medic snapped, sending Shiloh scurrying over toward the counter and picking up a small penlight, bringing it back and placing it into the Medic's impatiently waiting hand. He clicked the light on and shined it first into Spy's left eye, then into his right; whatever he saw there seemed to satisfy him as he turned the light off and handed it back to her even as Spy began to try and sit up.

"Well, how do you feel?"

Spy was silent a moment, focused only on the task of sitting upright, then once he'd managed that he sat hunched over in the bed, holding his head in his hands. "Like I nearly died." Again his voice was barely above a whisper - Shiloh winced a moment when she considered what talking with such bruising must be like.

Medic checked a gauge on the side of the medigun, then moved to go hook it back into its bracket. "The medigun requires more time to recharge, and I must check inner components. Can you endure for now?"

"I can endure," Spy whispered, coughing weakly. He mimed drinking something at Shiloh and she moved over to the sink, located a cup, and brought him back water; he had peeled his gloves off by the time she had returned and began sipping at the liquid, each swallow visibly painful. "Was anyone killed?"

Shiloh shook her head. "No, everyone made it back-"

"-did we get him?"

Again she shook her head and he frowned, shaking his head. "...how long?" he directed at Medic. The man shoved the medigun on its bracket up toward the ceiling, dusted his hands off, then shrugged.

"Five hours, at minimum. It will give it time to recharge and give me time to make repairs if I must."

Spy nodded very slowly at that, then handed Shiloh the half-empty water glass and began to ease himself toward the edge of the bed. "I am returning to my own quarters to rest and will return in five hours."

Medic did not respond nor did he try to stop Spy from leaving; Shiloh trailed along in his wake, leaving his water glass sitting on the floor by the bed. Just outside the infirmary Spy leaned against the wall and slumped down it, sucking in a shuddering breath and gently rubbing his neck with his fingertips.

"Are you sure you should be leaving-"

Spy held up a hand to silence her without looking at her. "I must speak with Miss Pauling immediately, Engineer as well. They must know...know what happened, so that we may devise a way to counter it."

Shiloh studied him for a long moment, silent. "...can you make it there on your own?"

"I will manage."

"Then I'll go find Dell, I guess. Are you sure?"

"Yes, now go - hurry."

She found Engineer in the barracks and felt bad as she roused him; he hardly knew his left from his right as he tried to get his feet back into his boots, but he managed to get himself halfway presentable before following Shiloh out of the barracks and then leading her to the little office Miss Pauling kept on the ground floor of the eastern building block. Spy was only just now lowering himself into a chair in front of the desk behind which was Miss Pauling; she offered Shiloh a small nod as she entered behind Engineer and then shook her head when Shiloh went to leave.

"Engineer, please have a seat. Spy...what exactly happened?"

Engineer nearly missed the chair as he tried to seat himself beside Spy; Shiloh opted to stand behind them, leaning on the wall and feeling rather out of place.

Spy took a breath, then coughed into his hands. "I do not know how he got behind us...he was not in that truck. He was quite suddenly behind me, and before I could react he had something at my throat - he had a glove on, of some sort. Silver...with something set into the palm. He did not touch me, but had me by the throat regardless." He fell into a coughing fit, entire body shaking with the effort of suppressing it; Shiloh moved to put a hand on his back and one on his chest, crouching in the floor beside him to keep him upright as she noticed him slowly leaning to one side.

"Spy, are you sure you ought to be-"

Spy cut Engineer off with a sharp gesture, sucking in a wheezing breath. "He did not touch me. I could not move, could not breathe, could barely think. I do not know what his weapon was, but it incapacitated me without contact. And he moves noiselessly."

He looked up to Miss Pauling, sucking in another breath and resting a hand over the one of Shiloh's that was his chest, then looked at Shiloh with a nod before going to stand; Shiloh rose with him, steadying him on his feet until he brushed her hands away with another silent nod.

"Thank you, I can manage from here," he whispered. "Engineer, we are going to be in need of some sort of counter to this...weapon."

Engineer nodded, muffling a yawn behind a hand. "Yeah, we are...I'm damn exhausted though, let me sleep a bit before I wrap my head around this one."

"Can you counter something you haven't seen?" Miss Pauling asked, looking between the two men.

"I can try," Engineer replied, standing.

Shiloh opened the door for Spy then stood back to let Engineer out too; she watched until the males disappeared outside, the door closing between then, then looked back at Miss Pauling.

"Well, you wanted to speak to me in private," the woman finally said.

Shiloh moved around to take Spy's empty seat. "Yeah, I did... You know these men better than me - should they have gotten the crap kicked out of them like this?"

Miss Pauling was quiet a moment, then shook her head. "These men are some of the best in the world, it's a little worrisome that they were so easily outmaneuvered."

"And how is this impacting my likelihood of surviving this mess?"

"I can't tell you - not because I'm hiding something from you, but because I don't know. Just, try to keep out of sight, always have someone nearby. Are you armed?"

Shiloh shook her head. "I know how to shoot a pistol but I don't own one. I have a compound crossbow but that's only for hunting small game, I doubt it'd do much good against a robot."

"I'll make sure you get a weapon, but try to stay indoors for the time being."

Shiloh slumped into the chair. "All right...well, whatever keeps me alive, I guess."

Miss Pauling's look was at least sympathetic. "I'm sorry I got your hopes up about being free by now. We'll regroup and figure something out."

"Yeah, no worries..." Shiloh muttered, standing and heading out the door. She didn't find anyone in the hallways as she made her way back outside and hurried across the open courtyard; Spy was not in the barracks but Dell was, and Shiloh hoped Spy had made it to the quarters he'd mentioned earlier - she had no idea where those might be so she wasn't able to even go check on him.

'These aren't ordinary men,' she told herself, silently making her way down the rows of beds - everyone who was in a bed was sleeping, and she didn't blame them one bit - and then falling onto the bed she'd claimed as hers. 'They've probably had way worse than this, they don't need to be checked up on.' She slid under the scratchy blanket and curled up on her side, back to the door, and tried to tune out the chorus of snoring.

\----------------------------------------

"Mr. Mann."

Gray Mann jumped as the speaker crackled to life before he'd even touched the button, then angrily slammed his hand into the wall beside it. "What is it now? What's happened? Fifteen units just went offline-"

"Mr. Mann, it seems my brother's obsession has gone a bit further than I suspected," came the female's voice through the speaker, tinny and distorted like she was shouting at it from across a distance. "This is worrying, he may do something rash before he completes your machine."

"I am aware of that, why do you think I came down here the last time-"

"-listen closely, Mr. Mann. This is a delicate situation...my brother now has two subjects of obsession, one of which is vital for the machine you require. We must bring him back down to a manageable level...the perfect balance of madness and brilliance must be achieved."

"What do you want from me now?"

"Remove the woman from the equation, I shall handle the man."

His teeth audibly squeaked as he ground them together. "What man?! What has happened?"

"Time is of the essence, Mr. Mann. Here are the coordinates..."

A slot beside the locked laboratory door slid open and a sheet of white paper slipped through to flutter to the floor. Mann bent to pick it up, seeing it had nothing else on it but tiny numbers printed in the top left corner.

"I suggest you move quickly, Mr. Mann. I will delay my brother the best that I can."

As before, the speaker went silent, leaving Mann to stand there and fume, and stare at the coordinates in his hands.


	8. Ch 8 - Hunches

'Morning' for the mercenaries occurred around 3 in the afternoon, when they first began stirring after their fairly bad night. Even though they rarely got so trounced in a fight an old, ingrained routine emerged with a line outside the showers and then a quickly made communal meal that they ate in near silence.

Shiloh was actually the last to wake up and nearly fell out of bed when she realized there was someone sitting at the foot of hers.

"For- geez- Are you trying to give me a heart attack?" she sputtered, glad that her reflexes had made her legs pull up to her instead of kicking out at Spy.

"Apologies," he said smoothly - his voice was back to normal, or close enough to normal that she couldn't tell a difference. "It was noticed you were not yet up and about, something out of the ordinary. I am told you are an early riser."

She sat up, smoothing her hair down and combing fingers through it. "I guess I am, yeah. I just...didn't sleep much, I guess."

"Mmm," was all Spy replied with, carefully selecting a cigarette from the case in his hand. He was still unmasked, and rather than clothed in the suit - the only clothing Shiloh had even seen him in - he was missing his jacket, and his shirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. "I wish to thank you."

"...for what?"

"Preventing me from toppling to the floor in Pauling's office. It was a kind gesture, I am not accustomed to such."

Shiloh slid her legs out from under the blanket and shifted into a cross-legged position, resting hands on her ankles. "Oh, uh, you're welcome. Getting support like that helps with coughing too...it's something I remembered my mom doing, when I was little - something something supporting the diaphragm. I don't remember why she did it, only that she did."

He cupped a lighter in his hand and stuck the cigarette between his lips, lighting it with a deft little flick of his fingers. "I see. Regardless of its origin, I thank you for your kindness and I am here to return it, although admittedly part of this is a request from Miss Pauling."

Shiloh stared at him a moment. "...I'm not sure what you're getting at."

He inhaled, then blew a thin stream of smoke toward the ceiling. "Miss Pauling wishes for you to be armed, specifically with a pistol since you said you were trained with one...?"

"Trained? Not...not really, no. I mean, I was shown how to shoot one, but I wouldn't call it training. And it was a long time ago as well."

He snorted a bit at that, looking amused. "Ah, I see. It is perhaps for the best, I will be able to teach you without worrying about overcoming previous knowledge - a proverbial clean slate, as it were." He took a drag on the cigarette and then again blew the smoke toward the ceiling, away from her. "Get up, dress yourself and eat, then we shall begin."

\------------------------------------------------

Shiloh was partly surprised to see the mercenaries had a sort of shooting range set up against the back wall of the facility. Spy was waiting on her there, and to her slight dismay she saw that Scout, Heavy, and Demoman were in attendance too.

"Didn't realize I'd have an audience," she muttered, walking up to Spy.

"These simpletons have little else better to do, unfortunately," was his reply. 

There was a line of wooden tables set up to shoot from, with targets set up at various distances between the tables and the piles of hay and sandbags that lined the back wall of the facility. Spy silently gestured at one table, where two pistols and a revolver were neatly laid out on a cloth with small piles of ammunition near each. Shiloh took that as a request to move over there and did so, staring at the guns curiously.

The sole revolver was a snub-nosed piece with a pearly white handle and seemed to be a larger caliber than the others. One of the two pistols also possessed a very short barrel and was overall the smallest gun laid out on display. 

She gave Spy an inquisitive look. "So, what, you want me to just pick one?"

"Choose one you believe will fit your hand most comfortably."

She flexed her right hand, then picked up the revolver and hefted it, then held it out in front of her with her left hand cupping the bottom of the grip while her right hand curled around the grip itself with her finger loosely resting on the trigger guard.

"An interesting choice," Spy commented. "I was expecting you to choose one of the lighter ones."

"This one looks like the gun I was taught on, and the man who taught me liked to say he never trusted clips or magazines." She squinted and looked down the iron sights of the gun, then sat the gun back down and gave the two pistols the same heft and grip test. "...yeah, I think I'll stick with the revolver, the pistols feel like toys."

"You know the difference between a revolver and a pistol?"

"Revolvers have a cylinder, pistols do not."

He gave her a nod, eyebrows raising. "You gave me the impression of knowing nothing."

She shrugged. "I don't, really - like I said, I don't really know how to shoot and just because I know the difference between two types of guns doesn't mean I know much more beyond that."

"Indeed. May I ask who taught you?"

She shifted her weight from foot to foot, staring up the firing lane in silence for a moment before sighing. "His name was Mr. Alexei, he was this big Russian guy...one of those father figure types. He taught me a lot of things, like how to shoot a gun, how to box..."

"Whoa whoa whoa, you know how to box?" Scout piped up from where he sat with Heavy and Demoman. "You don't look like no boxer."

"It's closer to just knowing how to throw punches and not take them in return," she said. "And it was a long time ago, back when I was still a kid." Dusting her hands she shot Scout a glance. "Besides, you really think I'd travel around as much as I do, alone, without knowing how to somewhat defend myself?"

"Well I never said that-"

"Enough," Spy broke in, tone dry. "Miss MacKenna, if you would pick up the revolver again."

\-----------------------------------------

Even though his eyes were burning with a need to sleep, Sniper still found himself glued to his scope as he watched the goings on in the shooting range beneath him. He could see Spy instructing Shiloh, watch as she selected a gun and then began taking shots at targets with it with Spy commenting and sometimes reaching to gently adjust her grip, or her stance.

The scope didn't offer a wide enough view for him to watch her fire and also check to see if she was hitting her targets, but he found he was interested in watching her more; it was fascinating to see her applying whatever Spy was teaching, watching her grip and stance, even the body language behind her shots, becoming more confident the longer she went at it. Some time later Spy ended the lesson, the afternoon having long since passed and with the sun beginning to set; Sniper watched him lightly pat her on the shoulder, then produce a holster from beneath the table they'd been standing at all day. They spoke some then Shiloh belted the holster on and secured the revolver on her left hip, demonstrating successfully several times a cross-draw with the weapon before Spy seemed satisfied and the little group - apparently Scout, Heavy, and Demo had watched the training session - headed off to what Sniper assumed was the mess hall.

When they'd gone inside and were thus out of his sight, he let his rifle drop down to his lap and ground the heel of a palm into an eye. He was so tired...he'd seen no signs of robot activity around the facility, or even any activity anywhere for that matter, not even cars on the road.

His teammates should be rested by now...maybe he could risk a few hours of sleep. He could certainly go longer than a day or two without sleep, but considering the circumstances he wasn't sure he liked the idea of being caught exhausted any more than he liked the idea of being caught unawares.

Growling, he stood and, after an argument with his inner voice of logic, decided he should get what sleep he could now while everyone else was awake and then later he could sort out a sleeping schedule that would let him be as vigilant as he felt he needed to be.

\-----------------------------------

"So tell me more about this Alexei guy," Scout was saying, plopping down into an empty chair beside Shiloh. 

She gave him a side-eye glance. "...why?"

"Because you seem way more interesting now than you did before. How many girls know how to box? You climb too don't you?" He noisily slurped water through a straw, grinning at her.

She wrinkled her nose. "I do climb, yes, and what I've already told you about Mr. Alexei is all I'm going to tell you."

"Aw come on, really? I'm super interested."

"He taught me how to hide bodies too you know," she said dryly, eliciting a chorus of laughter from the men sitting around her.

"I think that's a hint you should take, lad," Demo chuckled, slamming his bottle into the table, then peering at Shiloh. "Unless you was being serious?"

"No, no, I wasn't being serious. But really, there's not much to tell about him - he was this, just, giant Russian man. An ambulatory mountain who liked cookies, music, and boxing...met him when I was working - well, not important where I was, just that at the time I had a job, and he was the man who took me under his wing and got me acclimated, you know?"

"He teach you anything besides shooting and punching?"

She shrugged. "Lots of things, just nothing you'd find interesting. Helped me with work, taught me some history, time management, that sort of thing." She picked at the bread of her sandwich. "I miss the guy sometimes, he really was sort of a surrogate dad."

"Where is this gentleman at now, then?" Spy asked, stubbing the remains of his cigarette out in an ashtray.

"I guess he's back in Vegas where I left him."

Demo's eye widened. "Vegas? Las Vegas?"

She nodded, still staring down into her food. "Yep, that's the one. That's where I grew up."

"Do you or do you not play poker?" Soldier asked, slamming both hands into the table and leaning across to leer at her.

Shiloh jumped at the table smack and eyed him cautiously. "Uh, I know the general idea behind it. Gambling wasn't really my thing..."

"You know, I thought you were going to be boring," Scout said, leaning back in his chair. "But boy did I have that wrong, you're way more interesting than I thought. Bet you've got all sort of stories, eh eh?"

She shook her head. "Not really, no. I'm not some wild boxer, or card shark, or anything special, at all. I'm just sort of a professional hobo who follows warm weather around and does odd jobs here and there when I need to replace clothing or something. The most interesting thing about me is currently 'I'm stuck here' and 'there's a man trying to murder me.' "

The mood dampened a bit at the mention of the man that had so readily beaten them. Spy stood in the silence that followed and calmly walked toward the door.

"I will see you in the morning - gentlemen, Miss MacKenna."

\-------------------------------------

The evening was a bit chilly, with clouds on the horizon signaling that weather would soon be occurring - it didn't rain much out here but when it did it was less rain and more of a monsoon, a lot of water in one big rush and then back to being bone dry hours later.

Spy took in a deep breath of the heavy air; in many ways he was grateful he was still here to breathe it, and felt a little shiver run up his spine when he thought of how close he had likely come to breathing his last.

Death, usually, did not bother him - he had long since come to terms with the thought that someday, despite all his skill and knowledge, he could quite suddenly die. It was simply a fact of life for a mercenary, and this brush with death should have been no different than any other but, it was. It was very different, and he found himself rankled by the nature of the attack.

How had that man gotten behind him? Spy had utilized and been around Engineer's teleporters long enough to know there was no such thing as a silent teleportation - there was the sound of the machine, the rush of displaced air, and even if he had somehow missed the audible clues there was still the issue of the bright burst of light that occurred when the teleportation happened. Engineer had once tried to explain it as a transfer of energy, that energy could not be created or destroyed but changed, and the burst of light was part of the energy of the teleportation being changed into a new form...but there had been no burst of light, nothing to signal the man's arrival.

If Spy had not heard the man's step behind him then the man would have taken him completely by surprise, but again...it is not like it mattered, really. The man had still seized him - and how?! How had he been grabbed by the neck without the man physically touching him? There had been a flash of silver on the man's palm before something strange had grabbed him - it was like being held in an invisible grip, a solid field of some sort. The question of 'was such a thing possible' seemed ridiculous to think on now, after he'd already personally encountered one, but even still he found himself turning the question over in his mind.

Spy did not know enough about teleportation or fields to hazard a guess - what he knew of them was simply how to shut them down or destroy them, theorizing how they worked was Engineer's job. He pulled another cigarette from his case and lit it, watching the thin trail of smoke curl up into the sky above his head as he leaned against the outer wall of the building, wondering to himself if Engineer even knew where to start regarding finding a way to counter this dangerous, annoying tactic.

Movement out of the corner of his eye interrupted his musings, him turning his head as Sniper approached from the eastern buildings - most likely having just left his tower.

"You look like hell," he commented when the man was close enough to be clearly seen.

"And yet I still look better than you did when we got back," came the growled response. Sniper removed his glasses long enough to rub at his eyes again. "I'm to bed, and listen - I don't trust that we weren't followed back. I haven't seen anything around us - yet, anyway - but that doesn't mean much."

Spy waved a hand in dismissal. "I will see to watching, I must speak with our Engineer first however. And I have a request for you."

"What is it and why should I care?"

Spy hid a smile behind the cigarette-bearing hand. "Miss MacKenna was rather talkative today, enough that I am interested in what else she may be hiding."

"Not spilling her life story at the drop of a hat is not hiding anything."

"Not intentionally, no. But based on what she has said, I wonder if our dear Administrator is not yet again acquiring another pawn to use in the games she plays."

Sniper squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. "What the hell are you getting at now?"

"This woman was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, but...I am beginning to wonder if someone is prepared to take advantage of our guest beyond using her as bait."

Sniper grunted and shoved by him, heading for the door. "Save it, I don't want to hear any crazy theories you might've dreamed up, we've got enough to worry about without adding some hidden conspiracy to the pile."

"Yes...it is merely a hunch, but my hunches are rarely wrong. She is far more than she seems, however - I find myself inclined to investigate."

"Yeah, you do that, bloody spook..." Sniper muttered, all but slamming the door between them and stalking toward the barracks.

\-----------------------------------

As he'd promised himself he only took a few hours of sleep before rolling out of his bed and heading back up to the tower; the sun was barely more than a promise of light on the horizon, Sniper navigating his way across the courtyard and to the correct door in the eastern building through a combination of muscle memory and the dim light that single dusty light on the warehouse's outer wall gave off.

There didn't seem to be anyone else stirring, inside or outside of the facility...his worry that they'd been followed back was not eased by this at all; if anything it only made the feeling worse, a feeling similar to those he'd had when something had been stalking him back home in Australia - prey always seemed to know when it was being hunted, a sort of sixth sense he supposed.

Well, right now he felt hunted.

As the morning crept along the sun disappeared behind heavy storm clouds, and finally the weather cut loose and doused them in one hell of a downpour that went on for several hours. In a way Sniper considered this to be a benefit - anything approaching them now, even if cloaked, would leave an incredibly noticeable trail in the mud. He relaxed a bit at that thought, at least.

Some time later he heard footsteps behind him; he turned where he sat on his crate and watched as Shiloh came up the stairs, a mug of coffee and a napkin-covered plate in her hands.

"Morning. Or, afternoon now, I guess," she greeted him, walking over to offer the mug and plate to him. "Here, Pyro sent these up to you - it would have been sooner but every conversation with him turns into me playing 20 questions until I hit on what he's trying to say."

Almost on cue his stomach growled. "Thanks." He lifted the napkin to find a plain ham sandwich on the plate, which he sat on the crate beside him as he started in on the coffee. "Hardly anyone can understand him and we've worked with him for awhile now."

"At least I'll be an ace at charades once I'm out of here," Shiloh snorted. She moved over to sit against the wall beneath the windows Sniper was watching out of. "I just want this to be over with. It's bad enough being stuck in one place for so long, but knowing I've got someone out there wanting my head..."

Sniper offered her a crooked grin. "Eh, someone wanting you dead is just something you get accustomed to after awhile."

She snorted at that, but smiled. "I'm not a mercenary, this sort of life is strange and frightening."

He sat his mug on the windowsill and began picking at the sandwich. "It's not so bad...lots of travel, you're outdoors more often than not, pays well, it's challenging."

"The travel doesn't sound too bad, but I think I have a problem with being shot at."

"Hehe, not if you're the one doing the shooting and no one knows you're there until you're putting a hole in their forehead." In the silence following he finished off half the sandwich before speaking again. "I don't blame you, I don't particularly care to be in one place for too long either. Gets boring after a bit."

She crossed her legs, stretching out. "Well I definitely know I'm bored, that's for sure."

"How'd someone like you get to traveling anyway?"

"It was better than the alternative at the time."

"What was the alternative?" He took a drink of the coffee, letting his attention drift back to the windows to quickly check - no tracks in the mud, and no sign of anything moving. Good.

She was silent as he checked, picking at her cuticles and nails. "...did you have a happy childhood, Mundy?"

"Happy enough, I guess."

"My biological father died when I was four, and mom remarried when I was five. My step-dad was...don't get me wrong, he adored my mom, worshiped the ground she walked on. He just sort of hated me and any reminders of the man that'd come before him. The summer before I turned eleven, when mom was gone visiting my grandmother, my step-dad loaded me into the car and drove thirty hours to Las Vegas...dumped me on the doorstep of a church and left."

"Uh..." Well...what did someone say to that? He kept his attention out the windows. 

She chuckled a bit. "Yeah... I got handed over to Mr. Alexei and he brought me to Madam Zoya. She owns a gentleman's club, I ended up working for her until I was eighteen." She pulled her right knee up to prop her elbow on it, then rest her chin in her hand. "I was underage so I just did housework and ran errands. When I turned eighteen I hauled ass out of there...never looked back."

Sniper opened his mouth to say something, shut it, then shook his head. "That is...not what I was expecting to hear. Actually, I'm not sure what I was expecting. You just up and left, just like that?"

She shrugged. "I was legally an adult and aside from Mr. Alexei I didn't have anything tying me there. Miss him sometimes, though - a lot of what I know now came from him."

The silence stretched between them, Sniper watching out the windows and Shiloh remaining still where she sat. He was still trying to digest what he'd just heard and could hear Spy's words from the night before in his mind...for the life of him though he couldn't think what the Administrator would even want with a gentleman's club or how anything of this would concern her.

He scratched his neck after a moment. "Ever think of going back?"

"Nope," she replied quietly. "Wasn't the life I wanted, I do not want to be someone's show girl. I will take wide open places over gowns any day."

Another moment of silence as he stood and paced along the windows. "Why tell me all that?" he asked, stopping to lean against a windowsill, draining his mug of coffee.

"You asked why I started traveling, don't ever assume a simple question has a simple answer."

"That was one hell of a story for one stupid question," he said, turning to face her.

She shrugged, crossing her arms. "Yeah, well...guess you learned something today."

"I'm told you mentioned some things to the others," Sniper pointed out after a pause. "About yourself - did you give them the same story?"

"I said a little bit about Alexei," she replied, raising an eyebrow at him. "Good to know they're gossiping about it, though. Didn't think they'd blab about like a pack of magpies."

He grimaced and sat his cup down. "Nah, it's nothing like that. Only mentioned you were talking about yourself, which is something you haven't really done."

"Who exactly mentioned this to you?"

"Spy."

"He's also the one who pointed out to me I didn't get up before anyone else the other day, too...guess I'll keep my eye on him, since he seems so damned interested in me. You know Pauling warned me not to get attached, right? Think that should go both ways."

With a grunt he moved to the windows across the room. "I agree with that, it's too easy to get killed in this line of business. Getting attached just makes it harder to get things done...she tell you anything else?"

"Just to stay within sight of someone at all times and to stay inside. If there's any other marching orders for me I'm not aware of them."

He moved back over to sit down on his crate, picking up and rolling his empty coffee mug between his hands. "Did someone walk you over here, then?"

"Pyro did."

"Then why didn't he bring the food up himself?"

She snorted, then laughed a bit. "I don't know, why don't you go ask him? You might not take as long to guess what he's mumbling."

"Heh, creepy little firebug..." he replied, chuckling and looking back out the window. Still no signs of anything out there, thankfu-

"-MUNDY!"

Shiloh's shriek grated on his ears, the woman scrambling to draw her revolver while staring at something behind him. He spun around on the crate in time to see a Spybot fully de-cloak, knife already plunging toward him; the blade sank into his shoulder just above his collarbone on the right side even as he snapped out a hand to seize his rifle.

The Spybot left the knife in his shoulder and pulled the pistol that was magnetically clamped to its hip, raising it toward him, and then Shiloh got her first shot off. The revolver's round slammed into the bot's abdomen, in the middle of the left side; the shot shattered a window as it ricocheted, the bullet itself leaving a barely noticeable dent in the robot's body but noticeably rocking the robot on its feet.

The bot shot in the same instant and Sniper felt an explosion of warmth in his right thigh; he ripped the knife free and let it drop, then he was swinging his rifle up into firing position when the bot shot a second time and he felt another searing pain tear into his right hip - Shiloh's shot had put the robot off its aim but it was starting to correct itself. He fired then, grimacing as even the round from his rifle didn't fully penetrate the robot's outer covering.

There was a grating of wood on concrete as Shiloh suddenly kicked out, sending a crate smashing into the bot's shins with the Spybot crashing to the floor; Sniper mentally congratulated her on noticing that her bullet had deflected and shoved himself to his feet to get a clear lane of fire around the crate. A second round was loaded and fired, point blank, and then he had a third loaded in even as he swore aloud - the second shot hadn't penetrated either. What was this thing armored in?

Rapidly he placed four more shots into the same area, finally punching through and counting himself lucky that at least his rounds didn't seem to ricochet as easily as Shiloh's had. With the top half of its head missing the Spybot was little more than a pile of twitching metal and wires on the floor, and Sniper felt around behind himself until he got a hand on a crate, then sat down on it with a grunt before carefully prodding around the bullet wounds in his thigh and side - both appeared to have missed bone and the one in his thigh had missed the artery, neither of the injuries overly serious.

"Shit...what the hell was...shit, that thing was-"

Shiloh was panting, still laying in the floor with her revolver held in a loose two-handed grip on her stomach.

"Invisible, yeah," Sniper grunted, pressing a hand to the hole in his hip. "Good job on noticing the ricochet. Normally that doesn't happen."

She turned wide eyes to him. "What doesn't happen?"

"Ricochets, I meant - usually they don't deflect bullets like that. Seems the damn wanker's gone and given his toys an upgrade..."

"I... Are you all right?" She seemed to have just noticed the holes in him, sitting up and, with shaking hands, trying to slide the revolver back into the holster on her hip.

He pulled his hand away and wiped the blood coating his palm onto his pants. "I'll be all right, I've had far worse. Bleeding is the least of my worries at the moment, there could be more of those Spybots around - we might be the only ones who saw one and now we can't blindly trust anyone we come across either."

"What's that supposed to mean?" 

Sniper pushed himself to his feet and began to limp toward the stairs. "Spybots can also disguise as anyone they damn well please. Come on, and don't be afraid to shoot first and ask questions later."

"...what?!"

"Just follow me, damn it," he growled, halfway down the stairs before he heard her footsteps behind him. "And stay close!"

It had become so ingrained now that when he saw what he thought was a flicker in the light he didn't even hesitate; his shot barely clipped the Spybot's shoulder but it was enough to force it to de-cloak. Sniper slammed a hand backward and seized Shiloh by the collar, shoving them both flat against the wall as the robot fired at them and as before it took several shots in the same small area to punch through the robot's outer shell. His shot placement this time was into the chest area, time and lack of cover for himself and Shiloh forcing him to take a far less elegant approach to dispatching the bot, but eventually this one too was laying on the ground and sparking, useless and shut down.

He patted his pockets and took a quick count of how many bullets he had left on him, then snapped his rifle up and fired as the doorway at the end of the hallway burst open.

To Spy's credit he didn't flinch much when the fired round shattered the door frame near his head and showered him in wood splinters.

"I- have you lost your mind, bushman?!"

The man's voice lacked a mechanical undertone - good. "He's real," Sniper muttered, blowing out a breath and pushing out from the wall. "Check the facility, every damn nook and cranny, we've got the company I had a feeling was coming."

Spy looked down at the Spybot in the hall; over his shoulder and clustered around the doorway behind him Sniper could see the top of Scout's head and also Heavy, both loudly asking what the hell was going on.

"I see. Come gentlemen, we have uninvited guests," Spy finally said, turning to those behind him and letting the door swing shut as they quickly departed.

Sniper blew out another breath, shaking his head. "I knew it...I bloody damn well knew it. We were followed back." He spun on his heel, finding Shiloh still hugging the wall behind him staring blankly down at the Spybot. "Nothing hit you, right?"

She startled and looked at him, shaking her head, then her gaze drifted down to his hip. "You're bleeding."

"I know, but it can wait. Just keep following me and stay close - I do not want to be caught in an enclosed space with these things."

She nodded, pale, and hurried to stay behind him as he limped his way to the door and then outside.

\-----------------------------------------

Engineer had asked for some of the tables from the shooting range to be brought into his workshop, and then he'd helped Heavy and Soldier lift the three Spybots they'd found and disabled onto the tables for examination.

"I haven't the foggiest clue what these things are made of," he finally commented, rapping his knuckles against the chest cavity of one of the more intact bots. "Their hull is almost three times as thick too, which I'm going to say is why our bullets weren't doing much besides bouncing everywhere."

"We will need ammunition capable of penetration," Spy said quietly, one hand reaching into his jacket to touch the grip of his revolver there. "It would seem our adversary has, as they say, stepped up his game."

"Heavier calibers, armor-piercing rounds, something that'll pack a punch is what we need," Engineer said, scratching his chin. "That or we need more precision when we shoot - you guys tell Pyro I'm going to need him and his thrower here in a bit, I want to see what else these damn things are built to resist."

"What now?" Heavy asked, crossing his arms. "We found no other bots. Is this it?"

"I doubt that, my large friend," Spy said, turning and clasping his hands behind his back, beginning to pace. "Sniper's suspicion was correct, we were indeed followed back to here. I imagine these bots were here for reconnaissance and little more...Sniper must have been too tempting a target, with only Miss MacKenna present with him, to prompt them to tip their hand."

Soldier almost looked excited. "Does this mean we're going to be assaulted by robots?"

Spy nodded, and Soldier grinned widely. "That would be my guess...this facility is now compromised. Did anyone see any manner by which these robots even made it inside the walls?"

"The gate did not open, there are no other points of entry in walls. Do robots climb?" Heavy offered.

"Normally I'd say no, but until today I'd have also said bullets don't bounce off these things like they're made of rubber," Engineer chuckled. "You boys give me an hour or two with these things, I bet I'll find an answer for you."

"Indeed. If you will excuse me, I am going to apprise Miss Pauling of this unexpected visit," Spy said, twisting the cinders from the end of his cigarette as he turned and left.

\------------------------------------------

Sniper stood and put his back to Shiloh as he tugged his pants back up around his waist and zipped them; the bullet that had struck his hip had gone completely through, but the one in his thigh had clipped his femur and stayed lodged in his leg, requiring Sniper to drop his pants to his knees and let Medic dig around in his leg until he'd extracted the bullet and could close the wound up with the medigun. Shiloh had, thankfully, opted to sit with her back to the two men but Sniper still felt putting his back to her would be the polite thing to do as well.

"Thanks Doc, come on Shiloh - I need to wash up a bit."

She slunk off the stool she was perched on and silently followed him, sticking close behind him and staring hard at every shadow in the hall until Sniper led them both into the bathroom and had shut the door behind him. He peeled off his glove and dropped it onto the side of a sink, then started washing his hands.

"...that one almost had my name on it," he said into the silence, looking up into the mirror to see her standing awkwardly near the door. "Probably would have gotten me too, if you hadn't said anything."

She cleared her throat. "You say that like you expect I wouldn't have."

"I - look, I'm trying to say thank you, all right? And you did a good thing, not firing a second time."

She barked out a nervous-sounding laugh at that. "I didn't even see the bullet ricochet, I just saw it didn't do anything and I think...I kind of froze, wondering what the hell I was supposed to do."

"It bounced off that tin can and broke a window, I think. I heard shattering glass anyway...fact is, in that small a room, a ricochet can easily kill you."

"Why did my shot ricochet and yours didn't? Size of the round?"

He nodded, sticking a finger through the hole in his shirt - it was at least a clean hole, no need to worry about Medic leaving stray threads in him. "Yeah, my rifle is going to hit my target harder than your little handgun will...even still, when that first shot didn't penetrate I had my worries."

"Then why did you shoot if you thought it was going to bounce?"

"Well, sheila," he said absently, grabbing a cloth and beginning to mop the bloody streaks off his side that Medic had left behind, "if I hadn't shot we'd be dead either way, ricochet or no. Not exactly a proud way to go, brained by your own bullet, but I'd rather end things knowing I gave it a try rather than let something do me in without a fight." He pulled his waistband away from his hip and looked down - the rest of this would require a shower, which he wasn't going to do with Shiloh still with him.

He looked up into the mirror at her again. "Looks like we're even, though - I've saved you, you saved me."

She nodded, rubbing a hand up and down her arm, staring at the floor in silence.

He washed his glove out and wrung it out in a towel, then dried his hands and side off, turning to walk toward her while tucking his shirt in. "You all right?"

She nodded again. "I...shaken, I guess? Which is stupid when you consider where you found me - rolling in the street with a robot...with a hammer, of all things..."

He snorted, coming up to grab her by the elbow and steer her back out the door and into the hall. "Maybe we should get you one of those instead of a gun if it's that big a boost to your confidence."

"I think I'll stick with the gun, if that's all right."


	9. Ch 9 - Company Comes Calling

Sniper left Shiloh in the mess hall with the rest of the mercenaries before heading off to do his own personal sweep of the facility; she was hunched over in her chair, elbows on the table and hands supporting her head, silent, listening to the chatter of the men around her when Demoman clapped a hand on her shoulder and she nearly jumped out of her skin.

"So lass, I hear you actually shot something with that pea shooter."

"Yeah...ricocheted, though. I apparently only broke a window."

"That you even shot is a good sign, we'll have you a trained killer in no time."

She wrinkled her nose. "That's not the career path I'm aiming for, thanks..."

He snorted and slammed a bottle of beer down in front of her. "Give it time, lass, give it time."

Shiloh opened her mouth to inform him that she didn't drink when Soldier dropped into a chair in front of her with a deck of cards in hand. Demoman gestured and Soldier handed the deck over, the Scot beginning to shuffle; Heavy and Scout pulled up chairs and sat, and Shiloh was a bit surprised when Demoman dealt her in as well.

"Ah- so is this what you fellows do after being attacked?"

"This is what we're always doing when we're not trying to kill something," Scout said, picking up his hand and immediately making a face at what he saw. "Aw come on, are you kidding me? Did you stack this damn thing?"

After a moment Shiloh reached to tentatively pick up her cards...all in all, being dealt into a poker game after nearly dying wasn't the worst thing to happen to her recently, even though it seemed surreal that she was even here at all. She had no idea what else the mercenaries should be doing, but it also didn't escape her attention that each one of them was still armed - Demoman had a...something, some sort of multi-chambered gun, like a gigantic revolver, propped business-end down on the floor leaning against his chair; Scout had a pistol on his belt and a shotgun-esque piece strapped to his back; Soldier had leaned what she swore was a rocket launcher against the other round table, within reach, and she didn't even want to know what Heavy had left sitting over by the coffee machine in the corner.

Everyone in this room was armed, including her... Was this poker game for show, then? Meant to draw out invisible robots? At first she wondered why she was being made to participate - she was the least combat-trained person here - but then the thought of being bait occurred to her. It rankled for a moment but then she silently sighed...she was stuck here for that exact purpose after all: as bait. No sense in being surprised at being used in a more direct manner.

Demoman reached under the table and brought up a battered case full of worn poker chips and began divvying them out, then set the buy in. Shiloh absently slid a handful of chips into the middle of the table, then swallowed and studied her cards.

Oh boy, here we go...

\-------------------------------------------

"I am disappointed."

"It seems these robots got in silently and also are made of something new, the bullets the mercenaries were using were ricocheting far more than they should have."

"They still failed."

Behind Miss Pauling Spy rolled his eyes but remained silent; Pauling pushed her glasses up her nose and sighed quietly. "Yes, Administrator, they did. Ricochet I'm sure the men can handle, but there's no sign of how the bots even got inside - Spy seems to think the facility has been compromised and I'm inclined to agree."

"Then he knows exactly where you are..." The Administrator's voice trailed off, sounding unusually thoughtful. "Yes, actually, this is perfect."

"What is perfect?"

"Order the men to stay put - our target will have no choice but to come to them if he desires to acquire his prize."

"But-"

"Administrator, far be it from me to question your orders," Spy finally spoke up, "but staying here is suicide if the robots can enter without our knowing it. A fortress is only effective against a siege if it is impenetrable - if we relocated to a more secure compound we would be far more likely to eliminate this man."

"I do not pay you to question anything," came the woman's sharp response. "That you have already been attacked there tells me he is coming for you as we speak - do you understand that? You do not have time to relocate. Miss Pauling, it is my suggestion you leave immediately, and as for the men? It is my suggestion they prepare for a siege and strive not to disappoint me again. Lock the woman down and lure him in."

"And what guarantee do we even have that this man will be among the coming siege?"

The Administrator's voice went high and tinny, slipping into the distortion that had plagued the lines off and on recently. "He will come."

"You do not know that."

"I know this man," came the bitter response, the distortion disappearing on the final word.

"Who is this man?" Spy asked through gritted teeth. "What are we fighting against, exactly?"

"A man far smarter and inventive than any man has a right to be, and someone you can only hope to eliminate through brute force since you will not outsmart him. There is a vault down the hall from the room you are currently using as an armory - I suggest you place her there, the keys are secreted within your desk, Pauling."

The speaker clicked, the line went dead; Spy found his fingers pinching his cigarette so tightly he had almost bent it in half. He took a deep breath through his nose, eyes closing as he sought calm...the Administrator could be infuriating at times with her maneuvering and games, the likes of which he could only guess at most times but always seemed to have him and the others rushing off into stupidly suicidal situations.

Without another word he spun on his heel and stalked toward the door, nearly barreling into Engineer as the man stuck his head into the room.

"There you ar- what now?"

"Do not ask..." Spy growled, shouldering passed him. Engineer fell into step beside him, the two of them making their way out of the warehouse. "What did you want?"

"I think I've got an idea to deal with these hardier bots but I'm going to need a look at your sapper to see if I can do it without building from scratch - be a hell of a lot quicker if what I'm thinking will work."

"And just what is that?"

Engineer chuckled, grinning. "You'll see."

\-----------------------------------

It turned out her guess of the poker game being for show was correct, and for her prize she ended up with a bruise just below her right eye where she struck the edge of Heavy's chair on her way to the floor when Scout suddenly jumped up and dumped her flat with a 'head's up!' before he started firing into the far corner with the scattergun.

All the men had in fact jumped to their feet - which saved Shiloh from the more awkward result of landing in Heavy's lap - and moved as a group to demolish the far corner of the mess hall, leaving splintered wood, drywall and studs, and the sparking remains of a fourth Spybot scattered across the floor.

"Aw crap, I'm real sorry," Scout finally said, reaching down to offer her a hand out of the floor. "I just didn't wanna end up with you in the way or getting shot or something."

She took the offered hand and let him tug her to her feet, her other hand carefully pressing against where she'd hit the chair - it wasn't excruciatingly painful so she could assume she hadn't fractured her eye socket, at the least. "Better a black eye than a bullet hole...if I didn't know there were robots trying to kill us I'd just assume you were mad I was kicking your ass."

"Hey, I do not suck at poker, ok? I was distracted and Demo can't shuffle to save his one-eyed ass."

"Uh huh." She gingerly poked around her eye socket a few more times, then wiped away the tears as her eye began to water. "I think I'm going to have to get used to being bruised or bloodied around you guys."

"Pain is weakness leaving the body," Soldier snorted, looking almost disappointed as he sat his launcher back down, having not gotten the chance to fire it. "You will be made strong, you will be made unstoppable, you will be a force of nature. You will deal because it is your turn." He dropped back into his chair and began gathering up the cards that had gotten scattered everywhere when everyone had jumped up.

Shiloh righted her chair and slid back into it, everyone else likewise settling back down. "Are we just going to keep playing until robots stop jumping out at us?"

Pyro then poked his head into the room, his muffled mumbling as indecipherable to her as ever; he wandered in, still mumbling and gesturing with the hand not holding his flamethrower, with Demo finally shrugging.

"Couldn't tell you, lad, if he's not in his workshop I ain't sure where he is. You find anything? - raise."

Pyro shook his head emphatically, his mumblings actually sounding disappointed as he wandered in to stand directly behind Shiloh. She shifted some chips into the pot to match, then tossed two cards and slowly turned to stare up at the masked figure.

"...peeking at cards would get you shot where I grew up," she said, after a few moments of a silent staring match. "Not that that's much of a threat to you guys, but the sentiment still stands."

Before anyone could really comment beyond a few toothy grins the mess hall door opened and Miss Pauling pushed her head just far enough inside to survey the room.

"Uh, Shiloh? If you could come with me please..."

\-----------------------------------

"She what?" Sniper snapped, wiping sweat off his chin onto the back of a hand. He had encountered Spy and Engineer, with Pauling, coming from the warehouse during his sweep of the facility and had been told to come with them; he'd grudgingly followed, and subsequently been filled in on the latest and greatest words from on high. "Is the woman insane? She expects us to just sit here and let him to come us?"

"I am none too fond of it either..." Spy muttered, waiting for Miss Pauling to hurry off toward the mess hall, before exchanging a look with Engineer. "Is there actually a vault here in this facility?"

Engineer rubbed the back of his neck, teeth gritting as he thought. "I...you know, I'm not actually sure. We haven't done a lot of poking around since we never needed the space. I know there's a handful of locked doors we've never bothered with, might be one of those."

Sniper looked between the two of them. "What do we need a vault for? We're not fighting an army from inside a closet."

"It is...not for us," Spy said after a moment. "The Administrator also had orders regarding Miss MacKenna."

Engineer shook his head. "Damn stupid if you ask me."

Sniper looked between the two of them. "...you're bloody joking, we're just going to toss her into a room and hope for the best?"

"In a way it's perhaps the safest option for Miss MacKenna," Spy said quietly. "But even I hesitate at this plan...we do not know what we're up against. We really should be relocating elsewhere but the Administrator wants this mess settled immediately. She seems to think our adversary will strike us here, and very soon."

"Spy, we're running out of time," Engineer interrupted. "I need that sapper of yours if I'm going to see if this'll work and there's no telling when all hell is going to break loose."

"Yes, yes, I am aware, thank you," Spy snapped. He inhaled and straightened, staring up into the sky a moment. "I do not know where the others have gone, Miss Pauling is to retrieve Miss MacKenna and will be depositing her...somewhere. Perhaps you could be convinced to assist her?" he asked, looking at Sniper.

Sniper simply glared at him a moment before stalking off silently. This entire affair was getting dumber by the minute...stay here? When their enemy knew exactly where they were and yet they had no clear idea what was going to be coming for them? Was the Administrator insane?

Even worse, they were supposed to just stuff Shiloh somewhere and trust that would be enough to protect her; maybe if it was something easily hidden and not a goddamn living person that would make sense but you couldn't just stuff someone into a box...hell, what would happen to her if, by some incredible stroke of poor luck, they all died and she was still in there?

He hurried after Miss Pauling and caught up to her right as Shiloh was emerging from the mess hall, Miss Pauling smiling politely and closing the door behind her. Shiloh offered him a smile when she noticed him jogging up but it quickly disappeared when she got a look at his expression.

"This is stupid, Miss Pauling, we should be leaving, not hunkering down. I am not a fan of being a sitting duck," he snapped once he was standing in front of the women, giving Shiloh a glance he hoped didn't betray anything beyond annoyance.

Miss Pauling sighed. "Look, Sniper, I agree, but let's just get this over with all right? I trust your skills and the skills of everyone else here."

Shiloh's eyes narrowed slightly as she looked first at Sniper, and then to Pauling. "...all right, what's going on?"

Pauling shook her head. "Nothing you need to worry about, let's just go get your things and then you need to follow me-"

"Oh no you don't," Sniper growled, seizing Shiloh by the elbow and pulling her back toward him. "You know what she wants to do? Well do you?"

Shiloh glanced at the hand on her elbow, up to him, and then over to Miss Pauling. "Shit, you weren't planning on putting a bullet in me out back, were you?"

"Of course not," Pauling said with a frown. "But you're being moved."

"Yeah, "moved." Right polite way to say you're being locked up," he snapped. 

Miss Pauling pushed her lips together into a thin line, then from behind her back pulled a small revolver; there was a click as she pulled the hammer back then leveled it squarely at Shiloh, who backed up slowly until she bumped into Sniper.

"What the hell are you-"

"We can do this the easy way or the hard way, Shiloh," Pauling said, actually sounding a bit sad. "I'd rather we do this the easy way and you just come with me. No, keep your hand away from that," she added as Shiloh's hand dropped toward the revolver on her hip; Shiloh's hand instead reached back to dig fingers into Sniper's shirt at his side, a silent plea for help. "Not a word, Sniper," Pauling said into the silence that followed. "You've got a job to do and so do I. Shiloh?"

Shiloh stared down at the ground in silence, swallowing hard; when she looked up her expression was of pure loathing. "Fine. Whatever you say, Miss Pauling."

"All right, good," the woman replied, sliding the revolver back into what had to be a hidden holster somewhere at the small of her back. "Let's get you settled before trouble gets here."

"Right..." Shiloh looked over her shoulder and up at Sniper, her back still pressed against him. He gave her a grim look, then shook his head.

"I'm sorry, sheila," he muttered.

Shiloh remained where she was, staring at the woman with her mouth pursed, angry, then whipped her head around to look behind them as something struck the gate - something big, big enough to rumble the floor beneath their feet with the gate letting out a dulled, hollow 'bong' noise.

"And company's here," Miss Pauling said, pushing her glasses up. "Come on, we need to go - you get a bunker, looks like I'll be either sneaking or shooting my way out of here."

"YOU get to leave," Shiloh snapped, glaring at her. The ground shook again with another gate-rattling blast. "At this point I'd rather take my chances with getting shot...in fact, I'd much rather do that."

"We need you alive."

"What good does locking me up do? If everyone out here dies then I'M going to die inside there, just with a lot less suddenness and a lot more awfulness." Shiloh, mouth open to say more, suddenly jumped back and bumped into Sniper again as the air between the two women rippled; Spy smoothly de-cloaked, flicking ash from the tip of his ever-present cigarette.

"Miss Pauling, if I may make a suggestion...?"

\------------------------------

Shiloh jogged along behind Spy and Sniper as the trio headed outside, expression determined but face ultimately pale. Spy had suggested keeping Shiloh with him, with Sniper providing cover for all three, out of a need for Spy to focus more on testing...whatever Engineer had given him...more so than needing to focus on shooting and demolishing robots. Miss Pauling had at first tried sticking to her guns and insisting Shiloh be shut away in some sort of vault or storage room or whatever, somewhere in the facility, but when the two men plus Shiloh had again argued against it (and Shiloh had threatened to force Pauling to shoot her on the spot) Pauling had relented and said whatever consequences followed would be on their hands, not hers.

"Are you sure this is the best idea?" Sniper muttered ahead of her.

Spy was clutching a boxy something-or-other in one hand and his gun in the other. "Do not tell me that you are recanting on this now - surely you do not wish to tell Pauling she was right?"

"Locking her up is wrong, but keeping her out of this gunfight is a fine idea."

Shiloh snorted and skidded to a halt behind the two, the men surveying as the other mercenaries were taking up defensive positions and readying for a fight - Engineer had several sentry guns out and loaded, Demoman was laying explosives around the gate even as it shook from another attack from the outside, and the others were crouched behind partial cover, just....waiting.

"I'd rather die on my own two feet and my own terms than be shoved into a corner and cower," Shiloh muttered, taking a few steps back and pressing her back to the edge of the building. "I'll stay out of the way, just...don't lock me up, please."

"Do not go too far, I require you," Spy said, twisting a dial on the object he was holding, and then shoving it toward her. 

She grabbed it, then stared down at it - it was some sort of controller, an Electro-Sapper? It had a few toggle switches, a dial, some clamps and a handle, as well as a little moving needle gauge of some sort. The back of the thing was also hanging open, with wires somewhat haphazardly hanging from it. "And this is...?"

"Engineer had an idea to deal with the robots, but being as they are on our doorstep right now we are moving directly from theorizing and prototyping to field testing," Spy said, moving his suit sleeve to check a watch on his wrist. "It is set to where it needs to be, all I need you to do is hold it, wait, and be watching for me to signal you. Then, you will reverse the switches from where they are now."

She looked down at it again - the left switch was down, the right one up. "And what will that do?"

"If Engineer had time enough to get the wires correct, it will disable robots...if not, I am not actually certain what it will do."

The bangs and booms against the gate had gone oddly...quiet. Spy touched a hand to the watch again and faded from view with a 'be watching, yes?' and only the briefest flickering and bending of light to mark his moving away from them and toward where the rest were set up. Sniper lifted his rifle up, ready to fire, but kept his eye from the scope and instead watched the gate.

"...what are they doing..." he muttered into the silence. "They were trying to knock the bloody gate down not two minutes-"

There was a sound from the far side of the wall - hissing, like rushing air, and then suddenly there were robots shooting up from behind the wall, sailing over, and landing within the facility, flaming jets attached to ankles, legs, and backs.

Sniper swore loudly and moved to grab her by the shoulder and push her further down the side of the building, tucking her into a little nook where a recessed window was. "Stay back here and stay behind me. The damn things got in by flying."

"Why didn't anyone hear or see that? That's the least subtle thing-"

"Couldn't tell you, but shit just hit the fan."

His words were drowned out as mercenaries and robots open fired on one another.


	10. Ch 10 - The Rules Change

There were days, fights such as this one, that sometimes made Spy marvel at how well they all worked together despite their backgrounds, their temperaments, and the fact that when they had first been hired and placed on a team together they could hardly stand one another. With his cloaking abilities Spy often found himself in unique positions to observe everyone at work and so perhaps only he, out of the entire team, ever really saw how far they'd come and improved - such was the case today as he carefully made his way from where he'd left Sniper and Shiloh and headed around the outskirts of the gunfight to position himself.

There was their Heavy, mowing down the robots that managed to make it beyond the hell Demoman and Soldier were raining down; the two explosive-wielding men were nearly capable of holding that gate on their own, leaving the others to pick off the robots that were coming over the wall from other directions and angles. Medic was strategically deploying his shield in short bursts to allow him to dash from man to man, red light flaring from his medigun as he worked to keep them all at least functional (completely unbloodied was a bit out of the question in the middle of a battle).

Scout was darting around and drawing fire when he wasn't snagging ammunition and dropping it within easy reach of his teammates...his mouth often got him into trouble but even he had grown into his role and had proven to be a force to be reckoned with, even if he had taken the longest out of everyone to figure out how to function within a group dynamic. Another force on the battlefield was Pyro, currently hanging back and using blasts of compressed air to keep their immediate area clear of lobbed grenades and rockets - the courtyard and buildings around them were paying the price but walls were far more easily rebuilt than a man was mended.

The closer he got to where the explosions and the robots were raining down the less distinct Sniper's rifle crack and the rhythmic thuds from Engineer's multiple sentries became...Spy was not normally one to wade into a maelstrom of bullets (and worse) but slid a hand into his jacket pocket and withdrew from it a small box about the size of his hand; inside it were what looked like metal darts with drill-bit heads, heavy wire coiled around them, and the reinforced glass tube bottom of some sort of transmitter serving as the dart's body. There were six in total, Engineer having not had time to cobble together more than that, and the man had assured Spy that next time - providing there WAS a next time - Spy would have a gun mechanism to deploy the darts with.

For now however he had to apply them by hand, hence needing to be in the thick of things, and as he reflected on how effective they had become as a team he wondered if the robots he was going to target with these things would even survive long enough for him to reach and tag them. It even seemed like they were coming far fewer in number-

-he was almost thrown from his feet when the gate suddenly buckled and blew inwards in pieces; one of Engineer's sentries was crushed under a heavy plate and the rest of the mercenaries scattered to avoid the deadly debris; they shouted to one another, a frenzied scramble to change their tactics, when through the smoke from the ruined gate stomped three of the giant robots - a Heavybot, a Soldierbot, and a Medicbot behind them. His ears picked out his own Medic's indignant expletive when the Medicbot deployed its own shield, the three giant robots advancing as smaller ones rushed in around them. That certainly explained the sudden lull in robots flying over the wall...

Those large ones, then - those were definitely his best choice for targets.

He checked his watch; the cloaking device could only hide him for so long before it would need to recharge and he was running short on time. Throwing caution to the wind he gripped the handful of the darts and sprinted toward the bots; it was an elaborate dance to get through the flood of smaller robots and he slammed into more than one of them in his attempt to get at the larger ones, but thankfully the smaller ones did not seem to notice or care.

He skidded to a halt behind the large Medicbot and raised a dart high - Spy sincerely doubted anyone but Heavy would be strong enough to punch the dart's head through the metal of a robot, he needed a joint, a weaker spot-

-the only one he could reach was near the robot's waist, at the top of the solid post where the robot's upper and lower halves met and allowed the robot to pivot. He jammed the dart in where he hoped it wouldn't be dislodged easily or caught up between the rotating parts and destroyed, then he leaped back and quickly stepped around the Medicbot as the robot turned to look behind it - it knew something had just struck it, damn it.

With his cloak running low and the Medicbot now on alert, Spy hurried to jab the Soldierbot and Heavybot in the hip joints, the darts falling in and disappearing from view as the robots continued to march forward. Again he hoped the darts would not be destroyed, but with his watch beeping insistently at him he had little choice in the matter; as he ran in an awkward crouch he did manage to get the three remaining darts lodged into three small Heavybots. With a leap and a roll across the ground he de-cloaked right beside Medic, huffing; the German hardly noticed him, focused outward on the fight, so Spy wasted no time in trying to speak to him and instead made a mad dash for the corner of the warehouse nearby.

\------------------------------------------------

Shiloh had her back pressed to the window, a death-grip on the sapper in her hands, and was gritting her teeth against the sounds of gunfire and explosions. She flinched when she heard the gate blow in then winced when she heard shouts from far off and a much closer guttural grunt of pain from Sniper, still somewhere ahead of her but out of her view.

She could see metal and debris flying passed where she was hiding, and mentally she was aware of the weight of the revolver still on her hip - there was a part of her that wanted to draw the gun and help the men out, but she recalled the ricochet problem... Not only was she a prisoner and bait, but at current she was also useless in a gunfight. Great.

All she could really do was stand here, stare at this sapper thing, and wait - wait for Spy's signal and wait to see who was going to come out on top in this fight. 

Over the cacophony she thought she heard her name and looked up; she couldn't see anyone from where she was, but then there it was again - she was certain she heard her name that time and carefully edged up to peek out from her nook.

Across the courtyard against the corner of the warehouse she could just barely see Spy, crouched and firing his revolver toward the robot onslaught. He must have noticed her peering out because he ducked back around the corner - almost completely out of her sight - and began to reload his weapon, looking directly at her with an exaggerated look and clearly mouthing "NOW NOW NOW."

She pulled herself back into her little recessed area and with a quick flip of her thumbs reversed the switch positions. The sapper in her hand emitted a high-pitched hum and the needle gauge shot into the little red bar and quivered there...and then she felt the metal case in her hands beginning to warm.

Very carefully she sat it on the ground and nudged it away from her with her toe, then watched it and waited.

\----------------------------------------------------

From his cover around the corner Spy watched Shiloh fiddle with the sapper, then sit it down and push it away; he frowned at that - had something gone wrong? This was entirely the wrong time for something to have been miscalculated...

A strange sound came from above him, then; looking up he could see a box with power lines running into it hanging on the side of the warehouse, and to his annoyance he saw brilliant blue sparks beginning to shoot out of it.

"Ah merde," he muttered, springing to the side as the box's door shot off in a shower of more sparks; there was a ladder back here, laying along the wall of the warehouse, and the Spy at least made it far enough away for the metal door to miss him before he tripped over the ladder and was sent sprawling into the dirt. He was about to climb back to his feet when the box above him exploded in a blue corona and he decided it may be best to remain as close to the ground as possible and scoot away quickly.

\--------------------------------------

Shiloh flinched when she heard a very close bang, and curiosity had her peeking around the edge again; what she saw was both confusing and blinding.

A power box on the warehouse wall had...detonated? It looked intact save for missing its door, and yet it was surrounded in a brilliant arcing storm of blue electricity - as she watched it collapsed in on itself before shooting out a solid bolt that streaked toward the incoming robots.

It homed in on the three giant robots and struck, fingers of energy dancing over their metal frames and immobilizing them before jumping to three of the small ones nearby and zapping those too.

'It's like a net,' she thought numbly, watching the power arc around in thin lines, beginning to jump to more robots as a second bolt shot from the power box. Within an instant all the robots caught near the three giant ones were all tethered together with lines of energy, and just as quickly the heads of the robots began to detonate and burn out in showers of less impressive red sparks.

She sincerely hoped the men nearest the robots had made it to cover as the chain reaction of explosions burned out as abruptly as they'd began; above them on the warehouse wall the power box shorted out and the live wires snapped free to fall to the ground.

In one little flip of some switches the majority of the attacking robots had just been reduced to scrap.

"Holy shit..." she whispered, afterimages swimming in front of her vision...followed immediately by the hazy outline of a robot. "Shit!"

It was another one of those robots that could turn invisible - cloaking, she vaguely recalled - and it was right in front of her, an arm swinging toward her; it was awkward to reach across her own body for her gun with her right hand and raise her left up to defend herself, especially when she couldn't see clearly, but she got her fingers around the grip as pain blossomed in the palm of her left hand.

"Ow, ow, son of a bi-" She ducked and sidestepped and drew her gun, firing twice while blinking rapidly to try and clear her vision. A moment or two later it had cleared enough for her to see a jointed, handled knife embedded in her palm, a robot with a hole through its left eye 'socket' and, at least for the moment, no other robots near her. "Ow, that was exceptionally stupid, ow..." She grabbed the knife's handle awkwardly with her teeth and yanked it free, trying to close her injured hand around it.

Taking her eyes off the knife and the blood, she glanced down to the sapper; the wiring hanging from the back must have melted as there was a sludge-like pool of plastic oozing out from under a corner of the thing - whatever she'd triggered by flipping those switches had done a number on it and there'd be no second test run...but, at the moment it seemed that the gunfire was dying down, not as frantic, and the explosions had fallen off enough that she could actually hear the men shouting to one another again.

Abruptly something else de-cloaked right in front of her and without thinking she threw a punch - with her right hand no less, the one still holding the revolver. Every knuckle on that hand popped as her blow connected...but with a target that was fleshy, not metallic, and then there was Spy, staring at her with a look that was a cross between surprise and anger, rubbing his jaw.

"S-sorry, I was just-" Shiloh held up her bleeding hand, knife still clenched in her fingers.

"Forgiven, this time. My sapper is...?"

She pointed wordlessly behind him; he turned and Shiloh watched his expression subtly change to one of annoyance as he looked at his ruined tool.

"Well, whatever Engineer meant it to do it at least accomplished something," he finally said. "Had I known it would be destroying my belongings..."

"What's going on? Out there, I mean," she gestured around the corner of where they stood, shifting to put her back against the window pane behind her.

"We are winning - that...display managed to destroy the bulk of their forces. It is now a matter of cleaning up the stragglers and then assessing the damages to our facility," Spy said, stepping over to place his back against the window as well. He popped the cylinder of his revolver out and dumped the empty casings, then began to reload as he raised his voice. "Sniper, how many are left?"

Sniper's response was muted and distracted from a combination of distance, focus, and the fact he was shouting around a corner. "Give us ten minutes and we'll have this wiped up, no problem."

"Excellent." Spy snapped the cylinder back into place and spun it, giving Shiloh a somewhat roguish grin. "Your first firefight, and it appears your first kill as well." He nudged the destroyed Spybot on the ground in front of them. "An excellent shot."

"It was right in front of me," she said, tilting her head back and lightly bumping it against the window. "Close enough to stab."

He reached over and plucked the knife from her fingers, then with a flick of his own fingers had the blade folded into the twin handles and closed; he offered it back with a smirk. "Hardly matters providing you survive, yes? Here, a trophy."

She took it back and fumbled it into a pocket. "Are we done?"

Spy opened his mouth to reply but did not get the chance as, in that instant, the window behind them exploded outward with a metal fist punching through between the two of them; Shiloh dropped her revolver as the fist seized her around the neck and dragged her backward through the broken window.

"Merde! Sniper!" Spy shouted, brushing glass from his face and shoulders, a cheek cut and bleeding; he braced a hand on the windowsill and jumped, guiding himself between the broken glass and landing in the hallway not five feet from the robot that had seized Shiloh.

It was a Heavybot, unarmed save for a...syringe? Yes, it was holding a syringe in one hand and had the other around Shiloh's neck; the woman was struggling, face going red as she clawed at the metal hand - it was strangling her, even as it jammed the syringe just above her collarbone.

Before Spy could fire at the bot he heard a squeal of rubber on the floor behind him and spun around in time to see a Medicbot materialize, syringe gun already firing but completely silent until the cloak had fallen completely away. Four syringes struck him in the chest before he shot the bot, blowing a hole through its center; Spy spun around to face the Heavybot again but his eyes widened when he realized the bot - and Shiloh - were gone. Gone, or cloaked.

"Sniper! Get in here n-now..." He raised a hand to pull the syringes free, only to then notice his arm was moving sluggishly; in fact, he felt sluggish overall, oddly numb where the syringes had struck, and the numbness was spreading down his legs. 

What should have been a step was instead a stumble and Spy dropped to a knee in the midst of shattered glass, a mild sense of panic rising. What had they hit him with and where was Sniper?

\------------------------------------------

Sniper had heard the single shot of Shiloh's weapon and had turned, leaning to peer back at her; he'd spied the disabled Spybot and, satisfied she had taken care of herself, turned back to the fight in front of him. Not long after he had heard the window shatter and had spun around again, only this time for the second time today he found himself nearly nose to nose with a Spybot about the strike. There wasn't enough room between them for his rifle to be useful so he dropped the gun and pulled his kukri off his belt and swung - the robot jumped back to avoid the strike and then came at him again, its knife flashing at him and slicing over his head as he ducked.

Planting a hand on the ground he swung his body around, kicking out and swiping the robot's legs out from under it before leaping on top and straddling it, slamming his kukri into the riveted seam just above the bot's eyes. He had to grab the robot's arm to prevent it from stabbing him as he wrestled his kukri back and forth inside the bot's cranium, trying to sever as much as he could and shut the bot down; Spy's call for help reached him at about the same time as the de-cloaking Heavybot's fist slammed into his chest and sent the Australian sprawling backward to land on top of his own rifle.

"Oh what the bloody - how the hell are you tin cans doing that?" he snarled, rolling off his rifle and, as a result, out from behind the edge of the concrete slab he'd been crouched behind. Thankfully there weren't many robots left in the courtyard and the ones that remained were not paying attention to him; the moment he was out of reach the Heavybot faded from sight again. The Spybot rose to its feet, one eye dark and ruined and with Sniper's kukri still lodged in its head; Sniper blew the side of its head completely off with a snap shot fired the moment he got his rifle up to bear.

"We got cloakers mates!" he shouted over his shoulder before jumping over the Spybot he'd just destroyed, moving to the recessed window where he had tucked Shiloh. There was another Spybot here as well, shot and unmoving, but he felt his stomach plummet down through his boots when he saw the shattered window and the blood and cloth clinging to a few of the jagged bits left in the frame; he plucked a scrap of fabric off and rubbed it between his fingers - it was brown, a scrap from Shiloh's shirt, and Shiloh nor Spy were anywhere to be seen.

He braced a hand on the sill and vaulted through the broken window, landing on glass fragments and surveying the hall. There was a Medicbot in here with bullet holes in it and spilled syringes around its form, but other than the bot, the glass, and a smear of blood on the floor there wasn't anything here either.

"Spy? Shiloh?"

"What is going on? Where is our woman? Where are the spies?"

Sniper looked up to see Soldier staring at him through the window, sweaty and bloodied.

"It's not just spies, all the damn bloody things can cloak it looks like," Sniper snapped. "Shiloh's gone, so's Spy."

"What? How?" Soldier stepped through the window, carefully maneuvering his launcher. "Only Spies can cloak, that is a rule."

"Not anymore it ain't, I was just clobbered by a Heavybot that appeared right in front of my damn eyes. And I didn't hear it either - they're cloaked and completely damn silent."

"That is not good. We need to find our woman and our Spy - where did they go?"

Sniper gestured at the hallway. "I'll go this way, you go back that way, shout if you find a sign - and watch out for bots!"

Soldier nodded and hefted his launcher to his shoulder, then stormed off down the hall as Sniper hurried in the other direction.

Not just Spies cloaking, but the other robot imitations of the mercenaries...Sniper ground his teeth together, thinking about it - the Spies were bad enough, but add in the thought of every damn single robot able to sneak about-

-sneak about and be silent, somehow. For a moment he silently thanked anything listening that the damn things hadn't had the reinforced body armor that those lone Spybots they'd taken down had, although the thought of an entire robot army with better armor, silent movement, and capable of going invisible...

He felt a slight chill go up his spine. This job used to be so damn simple...

'Focus, find Shiloh,' he told himself sharply. Shiloh first, terrifying robotic implications later.

The further into the facility he went the more pronounced an acidic, burnt smell became; he found himself trying to track the smell, the only out of the ordinary thing he was noticing as he hurried down hallways, backtracking as needed to try and pin down the source of the smell. Finally, down two flights of steps he found the source - the robots had burned through the basement wall, a roughshod doorway etched through the metal and concrete with the edges still smoking.

Raising his rifle he stepped closer to the smoldering doorway, holding his breath against the smoke and poking his head cautiously through to stare into a darkened tunnel, visibility falling off sharply as the only light source were the ceiling panels in the room he stood in.

They'd gotten in, taken what they were after, and left just as quickly.

Swearing with every step, Sniper sprinted back the way they'd come - they would need to move quickly to catch the robots and hopefully retrieve Shiloh. The 'how' of everything else - the cloaking, the armor, the jet boosts - would need to wait until later.

Damn it...damn it damn it... This is why Spy had been shouting for help.

'I sincerely hope you keep up with them, you damn spook.'


	11. Ch 11 - Dead End

"I told her she was bad luck...not her fault I guess," Soldier muttered as he plodded along behind Sniper, the setting sun at their backs as they rushed out of the tunnel and found themselves out in the middle of the desert. "She did bring a hell of a fight with her, I like her for that."

The tunnel the robots had burned and chiseled through the rock had spat them out a quarter of a mile away from the facility, behind a rock formation that sloped sharply down into a ravine - the perfect cover both in terms of vision and sound, as the solid rock distorted the echoes of their boots and the clatter of dislodged stone. There were heavy tread tracks in the now-dried dirt; the robots must have brought some sort of machinery, or transportation, to this spot, driving it straight up the side of the ravine - the tread marks cut a ridiculously clear path down to the ravine's bottom, then turned to follow it south.

"Come on, and watch your feet," Sniper grunted, crouching and beginning to partly slide, partly walk down the steep and rocky incline.

"How far you think they got?" Scout asked, his bat dragging along with clinks and clunks as he skated unsteadily down, off to Sniper's left. "I mean, we found the tunnel pretty quick and whatnot, and we ain't found her dead yet and Spy's with her..." He trailed off and instead focused on not slipping and tumbling down the ravine, the three males finally stepping down onto the bottom of the ravine and almost sinking into the soft sand. "All right, so, they went that way. What's the plan?"

"We follow the tracks and find our woman and blow up some robots," Soldier replied, grinning. "In that order."

Sniper was already moving, boots scuffing through the sand; this ravine was three miles long and led up to a bluff that in turn led up into a forest, the starting base of the mountainous terrain that ringed this area on three sides. Unless the tracks suddenly veered back up the ravine there was nowhere else for the robots to go but forward, though the ravine veered to the right somewhere up ahead. "Scout, get up ahead of us and see if you spot them. Just watch yourself- there's a blind spot ahead and I don't want us gunned down when we get there."

"Yeah yeah, I got this. Gonna have sand everywhere when this is done..."

The smaller male sprinted off in a spray of grit, leaving Soldier and Sniper to hurry along in his wake. The rest of the team was loading up, resupplying, and would be following along in a truck, but until they caught it up was down to them...just the three of them and Spy, wherever the male had gotten to. He hadn't seen any sign of the man but then that was sort of Spy's job, getting into and out of places without being seen and leaving no trace of his presence. For the briefest of moments Sniper had the wild daydream of Scout coming back with Spy and Shiloh in tow, the spook having already retrieved her and dispatched the robots that had taken her in the first place.

It wasn't until he heard the quiet sounds of Soldier huffing and puffing just behind him that Sniper realized he had moved into a jog while having his little daydream; he started to slow down but then the sound of gunshots up ahead came bouncing back to them.

"He found them, come on!"

\-------------------------------------------------------

A great deal of pain woke Shiloh - a throbbing pain around her collarbone, a bruised neck, both knees burning in agony, her stabbed hand aching and feeling as though it was five times the size it should have been. Consciousness was difficult to get a grasp on at first as on top of the pain she was also dizzy and felt faintly nauseous so it took a moment for her to realize her head was wedged into a corner and she was actually standing upright, but...propped up, somehow. She wiggled and found her weight was resting against her knees, and then to her horror it occurred to her that wherever she was she barely had room to breathe; she was upright only because the space she was in was tight enough that her bent legs were braced against the surface in front of her, and with her head and shoulders in the front right corner of this tiny enclosure she'd remained upright.

She jerked and banged her head against the wall behind her with a hollow clang - she was inside a metal...something, a very narrow metal something, barely over two feet wide and about as deep, and its height she could only guess at, only knowing that as she painfully stood up (her feet had gone numb and now they had that pins-and-needles feeling) her head did not reach the top of the enclosure. It was pitch black in here and wherever she was it was silent outside of her little prison; all she could hear was her own breathing and her heart pounding in her ears.

She tried to clear her head and think, tried to organize her thoughts before the haze wore off and panic set in. 'All right...you're alive. This is good...this is better than expected. Step one - don't die, huge success. All right, all right...calm, breathe...assess. Where are we? We are in a box, a metal box. Does it have a door? Of course it has a door, how else did I get in here... I don't see cracks around a door - I don't see anything at all, too dark, but I don't see light so maybe the room I'm in doesn't have a light on, or maybe I'm not facing the door.'

There really wasn't any room to move more than an inch or two in any direction; as she wiggled she found her holster had been removed - she'd dropped the revolver anyway - and her hands were bound at the wrists and her arms bent at the elbows, trapping her hands up against her chest. There was definitely not enough room to lower her hands but she tried anyway, banging against the metal walls of her prison enough to realize the Spybot's knife was still in her pants pocket...she had a weapon, she just couldn't reach it.

'Ok, all right...we've got a weapon, can't get to it. What am I in?' She began to run fingers against the wall in front of her, feeling ridges in the cool metal but not feeling any door mechanisms or latches she could fiddle with, nor did she feel anything that confirmed she was facing a door at all. There were no other raised spots, but by banging the toes and heels of her boots against the four walls she could hear differences in thickness: three of the walls sounded thin so the odds of the 'wall' in front of her being the door were high...there just didn't seem to be a way for her to interact with it.

She jumped when there was a noise above her, then a breeze began ruffling the hair on top of her head; a fan somewhere above her had kicked on, at least solving the mystery of how she hadn't suffocated in this tiny space yet.

But that also meant this space had been prepared specifically for her, didn't it? When was that door going to open and spill her out into the waiting company of the man who wanted her dead?

Closing her eyes she tilted her head back as far as she could manage, letting the metallic-tasting air blow across her face. Calm, she needed calm, she needed calm to think and to plan.

'My arms are stuck up against my chest - I'm stuck in a position where I'm already shielding my heart and lungs, I guess? And I can duck to shield my head if that door opens, maybe, if I move fast enough, but maybe I can move fast enough to knock the guy over? Lunge off the back wall and just clobber the shit out of him, my hands are together and I've got leverage...'

She curled and uncurled her toes, wincing as she worked the tingly feeling out; when that door opened she needed to move quick if she was going to have any chance at survival - she had the fleeting thought of being left to rot in this tiny metal coffin but just as quickly forced it from her mind...and besides, if the plan was for her to die inside here then there'd be no reason for there to be a fan to blow in fresh air.

For now she needed to remain calm, not panic, focus on that door, and be ready to move the moment it opened. She was not going down without a fight.

\--------------------------------------------------

In the ravine, a quarter of a mile up from where it had turned to the right, Scout was engaged with a handful of robots.

There were only four of them but one of them was a Heavybot and currently had Scout dancing around in circles to avoid the stream of bullets flying in his direction; the other three robots were Scoutbots which provided their own bit of difficulty as they just added more bullets to avoid while managing to avoid any return fire Scout sent their way.

There wasn't any sign of Shiloh or Spy here, just these four robots and what looked like a sort of miniature tank with some weird-looking excavation attachment on its front. It wasn't even that big - maybe the size of Sniper's camper van, if that - and near as Scout could tell the thing was completely turned off and parked there in the middle of the ravine. He also noticed that the robots weren't shy about shooting in the tank's direction as his first thought had been to dart over toward it to discourage their fire and quickly learned they didn't give a damn about putting holes in their own vehicle.

This left him ducking, dodging, and sprinting in circles to try and get them to shoot at one another in attempts to hit him - this was moderately successful in at least getting them to stop firing, they were at least smart enough to not put holes in one another.

The fact that there wasn't any sign of Spy or Shiloh kept him from just blasting the robots outright - there was actually a part of his brain pointing out that it was kind of important to find clues to the whereabouts of his missing teammate and their missing guest and blasting the robots that took them when the missing persons were not actually here...probably not the smartest thing to do. Granted, it also wasn't smart to let them shoot him to pieces, something was going to need to give here and very quickly.

The "give" as it were was the arrival of Soldier and Sniper, both of which made quick work of the robots before Scout could shout them down.

"Aw damn it, why'd you go and do that? I totally had that and now we don't-"

"-are they here?" Sniper interrupted.

"Nope, just these things and that thing," Scout used the end of his bat to gesture at the tank, still sitting immobile and powered down. "You two chucklenuts just blasted what probably took 'em though."

Soldier swung his launcher out of his hands and onto his back, switching to his shotgun, then stomped passed Sniper and toward the tank. "Did you even look inside?"

"No."

"Stand back, men." Soldier moved to the tank, circled it a few times, then moved to the single hatch door on the tank's rear; with Sniper and Scout standing nearby Soldier ripped the door open and jumped inside with an incoherent battle cry followed by a thud, a sound of multiple metal things striking metal, and then a single shot from the shotgun. 

"What the hell just happened?" Scout moved up to the hatch to peer inside.

Soldier reached out plant a hand on Scout's face and shove the smaller man away before coming out with his shotgun in one hand and a smoking, broken, and useless stand of what had once been a teleporter in the other.

"Engineerbot. He broke his toy and pulled a gun, I shot him in the head but we are out a teleporter."

Sniper swore loudly. "They got away by teleporter..."

"Teleporters got a range to them though, right? They can't have just gone anywhere they wanted to, they have to be somewhere nearby." Scout bent over, hands on his knees, to stare at the broken machinery. "Guess that explains why this thing was just sitting here, can't take a tank through a teleporter - hey, how'd this tank get down here anyway? The tracks just freaking stop."

Sniper lifted his hat to run a hand through his hair, gritting his teeth in frustration. He walked around the tank a few times; Scout was right that the tracks stopped where the tank sat...that didn't make sense though because this thing couldn't have traveled in only one direction, especially not if the trail started from their facility - the tank had to have come from somewhere. The ravine walls rose on either side of them, steep and devoid of any sign of tank treads...so it hadn't come down the walls. Where did this gorge end?

He stared up the ravine, thinking - it pretty much dead ended where the mountainous area started (in fact, this area might have been a river at one point). Sniper had no idea how one could obscure or disguise tread marks but the only other possible place of origin for this tank was from that direction. If they knew the range on the teleporters, maybe...

"You two get up to the trees," he finally said, spinning on a heel and heading back the way they'd come, looking for a less steep place. "I'm going to get up there and have a look from above, flag the others down. Teleporters don't have an infinite range, maybe Engineer can give us an idea-"

"-you think we'll find them?"

Sniper began scaling up the rocks. "Spy has to still be following them or else we would have found him by now, Shiloh can't be dead yet. Might be we meet them coming, but we won't be helping anyone by standing around and staring at a dead end. Only place around here they can hide in is that forest up ahead of us."

\--------------------------------

She waited so long for that door to open that her feet were beginning to go numb again, but the sudden explosion of light into her dark prison spurred her forward; she sprang out of that metal box with her fists in front of her, swinging down to solidly connect with whatever it was directly in front of the door. She heard a grunt of surprise as she and her target hit the floor in a tangle where she was immediately placed at a disadvantage - her hands were tied, her target's hands were not.

Kicking and struggling to keep her arms away from grasping hands, Shiloh rolled off to the side and to her knees but was immediately tackled by the person she had just slapped, sending them both to the floor but with Shiloh pinned under someone heavier than her.

There was a robot on top of her, fighting to try and grab her struggling form. Finally it managed to clamp a hand over her mouth and Shiloh thrashed until the hand slipped between her lips; out of instinct she bit down and felt her teeth sink into something fleshy, felt the tang of blood spurt up around a canine tooth that had broken skin. Skin, blood...? 

There was an exclamation of pain and then a hissed "stop it, stop it and be still, you idiot," from the "robot" on top of her. It spoke with a human voice and continued to hold its hand over her mouth and wrestle to stay on top of her. "Would you stop it before you get us both killed?!" The thing thrust her tied hands under one of its knees and put all of its weight there, then grabbed a handful of the hair on top of her head and tugged until she stopped biting down and simply held its hand between her teeth in a stalemate.

Huffing around the hand in her mouth, Shiloh glared up at this flesh-but-robotic thing. Very slowly, from the top of its head and working its way down, the robotic visage gave way as a maskless man de-cloaked in front of her eyes; he had a darker skin tone, black hair shot through with silver and disheveled, a squared jaw with a jagged scar from the corner of his mouth back toward his ear, with his cheeks covered in easily a week's worth of stubble, and gray eyes that were glaring at her.

"I am going to remove my hand from your mouth," he hissed at her, bending low to push his face near hers. "You are going to be still or we are both dead, do you understand?"

Biting him as she was and with his hand over her mouth she wasn't exactly in a position to verbally respond, but she did open her mouth to let his hand loose; he slowly leveraged himself off her, kneeling at her side. He had on a rumpled suit of blue with rips and tears in the fabric, and down one whole side of it was one large brown blood stain. 

"Stay there and do not move," he ordered, standing and stepping back a few paces.

Shiloh looked around and blanched when she saw what she'd just leaped out of - it was a locker, an honest-to-god, store-crap-in-this locker. Hers was one locker in a line of lockers along the wall behind her; there were twenty total inside this small room, the walls and ceiling made of metal with two light panels in the ceiling giving off a harsh white light, and with a key pad glowing brightly beside the single door across the room from her. Above a few of the lockers were wires that ran to freshly cut holes in the ceiling - the source of power for the fans, most likely.

The room was incredibly bare otherwise - no furniture, nothing on the walls, just the lockers and a small briefcase sitting beside the door. Whoever the man was - and he was not the man Shiloh had encountered in Sandville - he moved slowly toward the door, pressing an ear and his hands to it, silent and listening. He stayed there for several breaths, then bent to pick up the briefcase and move toward her again; she tensed as he knelt beside her, popping the clasps on the briefcase and opening it.

"Your hands," he said quietly, holding out one of his own with the other hidden behind the lid of the briefcase.

When she hesitated he irritably snapped his fingers at her, his other coming back into view with a pair of surgical scissors in hand. Slowly Shiloh extended her hands to him and watched as he used the scissors to snip away the thin cording that tied her hands together; she rubbed her wrists when they were freed, her hands suddenly feeling hot as unimpeded circulation returned and with the gash in her left palm beginning to bleed again.

"Are you nauseous?"

"Not anymore..." she replied cautiously, scooting from him a bit. "What the hell is going on? Who are you?"

"I will explain but only once," he replied, voice soft as his attention turned to the briefcase again. "All you need know is if you trust me you may make it out of here alive, both of you."

"...both of us? As in, someone besides me and you?"

From the briefcase he lifted a little glass vial, dark orange in color with a silver-and-rubber top, and a syringe; Shiloh slid back from him as he inserted the needle and drew out a measured amount of whatever was in the vial. His eyes flicked to her briefly then back to the syringe, flicking it to dislodge air bubbles.

"This is not for you." He stood and moved back to the wall of lockers, pulling a small key from his pocket and opening a locker three down from the one Shiloh had been in; he let the key drop to the floor afterward, Shiloh watching as he caught the limp form of Spy as the man tipped forward out of the locker toward him.

The blood-stained man stuck the barrel of the syringe into his own mouth to free his hands, then dragged Spy over to where Shiloh still sat in the floor and laid him out beside her; Spy's face was pale and he was most definitely unconscious, and he'd also been stripped of his jacket, mask, and gloves - there were four little spots of blood on the front of his white shirt and a cut across his face that seemed to have a sliver of glass still stuck in it. As Shiloh watched, wide-eyed and silent, the man rolled up one of Spy's sleeves and jabbed the needle into the vein, injecting him with whatever was in it and then carelessly tossing the emptied syringe aside.

"With luck he will awaken before we are found. He should consider himself fortunate the sedative he was shot with was not a fatal dosage."

Shiloh gently touched a hand to the sore spot near her collar bone - sedative...that made sense, she supposed. "Who are you?"

"What do you know of our conflict?"

"I know there's a man who wants me dead, and there's killer robots everywhere. Beyond that-"

He cut his hand through the air in a sharp gesture, silencing her. "No, no no, not of that, not of this - the conflict that came before this."

"Uh..."

His lips twisted into a smirk. "Clueless..." He plucked at his rumpled suit. "Do you see my suit? Do you note its color?" She nodded silently. "And what color do the mercenaries you have seen wear?"

"...r-red?"

He nodded, brushing a hand down his lapels. "There was a singular conflict long ago that prompted the hiring of mercenary teams to steal land from wealthy but warring brothers... That conflict has long since turned into something other than a familial scuffle, but a most general explanation is there are more than the mercenaries you are familiar with - I am a member of one such team."

"Why are you here then?"

"Silence. Stay here, watch over him, I will return shortly. Preparations must be made...the moment your Spy awakens, we will need to move quickly."

The briefcase clicked loudly in the silence as he closed the clasps and stood, his robotic disguise falling back around him, again from the head down; Shiloh shivered a bit as she stared up at the face of the 'robot' in the few moments before he turned, punched in a code to unlock the door, then left - she heard the door lock behind him, then she was alone with Spy.

\--------------------------------------------

Consciousness came back slowly, punctuated by the stinging of the syringe holes in his chest. Spy opened his eyes and blinked until he could tell clearly that he was staring at a wall; he felt woozy, almost hung over, like his head was packed with cotton. He had been drugged - with what he didn't know - and he closed his eyes and began to focus inward, going through a few mental and breathing exercises he'd devised to help find clarity after being drugged.

"Spy?"

His eyes flew open and he turned his head to look beside him; Shiloh was sitting not six inches from him, her knees pulled to her chest and her arms around them.

"Miss MacKenna..." He raised a hand and pressed it to his forehead, then frowned when he realized both his mask and gloves were missing and one of his sleeves was rolled up. His head swam as he made an attempt to sit up so instead rolled to his side and pushed himself upright that way, inhaling deeply through his nose and exhaling slowly. "What do you know?"

"I have no idea where we are but we were stuffed into lockers and we both got drugged. There's also a uh...a man in a blue suit, human, said if we listen to him he'll get us out of here alive."

Spy stiffened. "A man in a blue suit, you say?" She nodded and he grimaced. "Lovely...exactly what is he wanting?"

"He said something about explaining things to us, but beyond that..." Shiloh eyed him, gaze moving from the cut on his face down to the blood spots on his front. "Are you feeling all right?"

"Do not be concerned for me," he said, rolling his sleeve up to match the other. "What of you?"

She held up her stabbed hand and looked at it, then winced as she tried to flex her fingers. "I'm breathing, that's enough."

Much as she had done to him he took a moment to look her over; aside from the injured hand and bruising around her neck she seemed relatively unharmed, and despite her mentioning they both had been drugged she seemed far more alert and focused than he felt at the moment.

"What do we have?"

Shiloh shifted and stuck her good hand across her body into her left pocket, then pulled out the knife he had folded up and given to her, offering it to him; he took it and flicked it open experimentally. It was not his knife but it would suffice and he had nothing else on him at the moment anyway - it would seem the robots had thoroughly checked him, but not Shiloh.

"I am surprised they missed this blade."

Shiloh frowned. "Yeah, I thought that too...if I weren't so busy contemplating my near-demise I'd be a bit more pissed that not only did they turn me into a damsel in distress, they also didn't think I'm threatening enough to check my pockets."

He smiled faintly and closed the knife. "Cherish being underestimated, it may save your life one day."

They both looked up sharply at the sound of the door unlocking.


	12. Ch 12 - No Plan Survives Contact

As the blue-clad spy stepped into the room the dislike between the two men was palpable: they spent the first few moments simply glaring at one another as the blue spy gently sat the briefcase he'd had with him earlier onto the floor beside the door, then locked the door behind him.

"There was the slightest of worries that the neutralizing agent I gave you would not work as quickly as I desired."

Spy glanced down at the crook of his elbow, the one that had been bared with the sleeve rolled up, and his frown deepened as the other's changed into a smirk. "Miss MacKenna tells me you have information - what are you expecting in return? Information does not come free, not in our trade and especially not when you consider our unique working relationship."

The other came over to squat down beside them, sitting on his heels. "There is more at stake here than pride and reward. Has the Administrator informed you of Blu's fate?"

"No. She does not speak to us of any team."

"My entire team has been taken - months ago, a man began hunting us down, striking us as we moved between bases. We were ordered to kill him, but, as you can guess... I alone am free, and I require your assistance."

Spy shook his head. "An entire team taken is not plausible."

The man smirked again, reaching into his rumpled suit to pull out a cigarette case; he removed one, lit it, and took a deep drag on it before sliding the case back into place. "I too once believed such, but this man who hunted us...he is a terror, a nightmare, a force of nature no man can match. I do not even think he is human." As he spoke his voice shifted from the lilting, almost mocking tone he'd had since walking through the door into one more darker, more...fearful. He was looking at them but staring through them, gaze distant and unfocused. "He can do things I cannot explain and that my team could not counter...he hunted us like a hound, ran my companions into the ground, ground them beneath their exhaustion until they could stand no more. He took them alive and they remain alive."

"For what reason?"

The man shuddered slightly, nostrils flaring briefly. "Have you noticed the robots with armor? Or perhaps ones trimmed in chrome? Have you noticed they are getting smarter, more skilled, more deadly?"

"We were assaulted by Spies that proved more difficult than usual, and their tactics have changed-"

The man leaned forward, jaw working for a moment before sound came out. "It is because of him - the man, the one who stole my team. All eight of them...glass tubes, wires. Men swathed in machinery that translates the sum of their parts, their knowledge and skills, into specially designed metal husks."

"Impossible," Spy snapped. "There is no way-"

"I have seen it," the Blu spy interrupted, eyes narrowing. "I have seen it and narrowly escaped it myself." He reached down to unbutton his suit and pull it open, revealing a matching bloodstain on his shirt beneath the jacket - the shirt was shredded with bullet holes, the visible skin under it reddened and badly healed from improper treatment. "This man requires me to complete his macabre collection - a collection whose purpose I do not know - and despite his robots shooting to maim rather than kill, they still nearly killed me."

"What does he want?" Spy spared Shiloh a glance, who still sat silent and motionless beside him. "What plans are in motion?"

The other spy took another long drag before answering. "I do not know...his movements are erratic, I can detect no overarching motive. He demolishes towns, abducts and murders people in the streets...he has my team enslaved within machines, he builds elite robots and installs upgrades in the others, but not in all of them and does not deploy them with any sense of a unified plan... I can tell you one thing for certain, however."

He stood, beginning to pace, the cigarette little more than a smoldering stub between his fingers. "Gray Mann is no longer in control of his creations, not fully...there is a power struggle - your presence here, both of you, is a result of that struggle. Mann took you both for bargaining chips with this...this madman. Her because the man demands her life and you...well, you because he does not have me." A somewhat grim smile crossed his face. "We are interchangeable, you and I, now that he knows more than just my companions exist."

He stood, moving toward the briefcase. "We must move quickly...I do not know when Gray Mann may use the two of you, it is imperative I get you out before the man comes for you. Here-" Spinning on his heel he returned to them, kneeling down once more and opening the briefcase; from within it he pulled a pistol and several full magazines, which he handed over to Spy. "We are within a temporary production facility and everything down to individual rivets is monitored. This is as much as I dared risk."

Spy nodded, expression grim, loading the gun and, no doubt out of habit, going to slide it into the jacket that was not there; he instead stuck the spare magazines into a pocket and then pushed himself to his feet. "What is our plan?"

The blue spy leaned over and silently offered Shiloh a hand; when she tentatively accepted it and allowed him to pull her to her feet, he suddenly jerked her close and plunged his hand into his jacket. Before she could protest there was a flash of silver and then a pinch of pain as he seized her left arm and clamped something around her wrist.

"-I - hey-!"

She tore her arm free of his grasp and staggered back, twisting at the shackle-like clump of metal now painfully digging into her wrist as well as pinching a bit of skin that had gotten caught between the pieces.

Spy immediately gave the other man a shove. "What do you think you are doing?!"

"She will need it," the male replied coolly, bending to pick up his briefcase. "And so will you - this is one of the cloaking devices the...man....is installing in some of the robots. It will serve us in getting her out of here unseen, and if your Engineer can make sense of it perhaps he can devise a method to make them fail."

"Ow, ow you...didn't think to just say something?" Shiloh hissed through gritted teeth, letting out a whoosh of a sigh as she managed to get the skin of her arm out of the pinching clasp of the cloaking device. 

"Time is of the essence. Remember what I have told you, and also consider this: the survival of your team depends on the rescue of mine. The longer you delay, the worse our situations will become. And for the love of God keep her out of his hands - her mere existence drives him mad, it may prove to indefinitely halt his plans if we persist in making her a thorn in his side." Closing the briefcase and setting it aside, he removed a weapon of his own from within his jacket and then checked his watch. "We will move in short bursts - her cloaking device will keep her hidden far longer than ours will, but then, she is by far the one needing it the most."

Shiloh frowned and stared down at the device on her wrist. "How do I even use this thing?"

The blue spy reached over to - with Shiloh grudgingly allowing him - turn her hand palm-down, then lightly tapped an off-color patch of metal that was otherwise flush with its surroundings. "Cover this panel - I was forced to alter it and insert a power source to it, since normally these are hard wired into the robot. You will know when the cloak is about to fail when the device heats up. Now, come..." He moved for the door, hand hovering over the keypad as suddenly, from outside the door, came a blaring foghorn-like alarm. Silently he placed a hand into his jacket and removed from an inner pocket a round disc of metal with a receiver along its edge; it was humming, vibrating madly.

"He is transmitting orders," the man hissed, dropping the disc and crushing it beneath his heel. "Quickly - cloak. Now!"

Shiloh covered the panel with her palm as instructed and...nothing happened. The blue spy's brow furrowed and he tore off a glove to press his own hand over it - again, nothing.

"Merde..." he spat, quickly fumbling with the watch on his own wrist; when he had it off he clasped it around Shiloh's right wrist, then pulled his cigarette case free and jabbed a finger at whatever lay inside it. As before, the robotic disguise slowly fell over him from the head down. "Press the buttons on the side and lets go, quickly!"

The spy keyed the door unlocked and pushed it open, stepping out into the hallway beyond it. Shiloh pressed the only button on the watch, along its side, and grimaced as Spy grabbed her left hand before she faded from view; shortly thereafter Spy also went invisible but kept a tight grip on her hand as he moved to edge up behind the blue spy.

With a gesture the disguised blue spy started down the hall silently, Spy pulling Shiloh along in his wake. The hallway was dark, dingy, and claustrophobic, and smelled strongly of tar and burnt wood; it ended at a metal catwalk that extended over a factory work floor below them, cramped assembly lines on and filling the air with deafening noise as the lines assembled what looked like Scoutbots and Medicbots - there was at least no danger of anyone hearing their footsteps as they moved across the rickety catwalk.

They crossed the catwalk quickly into another hallway that very suddenly turned into a stairwell that carried them down toward the factory floor; the stairwell was not at all lit and so Spy, after hissing at the other to wait, shoved Shiloh into the corner and then pressed in against her as their cloaking devices fell away - they needed a handful of moments to recharge and the three of them spent a tense moment in the dark with the factory's noise ringing in their ears until they were able to cloak again and move.

As they were about to step from the stairwell onto the factory floor, a cluster of Scoutbots suddenly were sprinting by; the blue spy paused and the bots noticed him, turning to regard him with glowing eyes.

"-Smoke detected-" one buzzed, before all of them drew their weapons and aimed.

The blue spy dove to the side and Spy yanked Shiloh backwards into the safety of the stairwell as the Scoutbots fired, tearing apart the stairwell's door frame; they turned to track the blue spy's movements, his disguise falling away as he drew his own weapon and sprinted away.

"GO!" he screamed, barely heard over the noise of machines creating machines. "AND TELL MY TEAM - JAVIER HAS REPAID HIS DEBTS!"

The Scoutbots ran off in pursuit, the sounds of their gunfire becoming less distinct but now joined with shots from somewhere further away within the factory. Spy dragged Shiloh back up the stairs and back to the catwalk, huddling near the doorway as again their cloaks fell off. He shoved her flat against the wall and then peered out - there was the way they'd come across, which only connected to the hallway that held the room they'd been imprisoned in, but below them was a catwalk that ran adjacent to this one that had at one end a closed door and at the other a lit control room of some sort. Spy stepped out from the doorway and looked down - it was a ten foot drop from this catwalk to the one below it.

"We need to get down before we are noticed," he said, raising his voice just enough to be heard over the cacophony from below. "We have no choice but to jump."

Shiloh nodded in understanding; they waited for their cloaks to recharge, then activated them and hurried out to climb over the railing of the catwalk and then drop down to the one below; the one they landed on shook and groaned disconcertingly but didn't collapse, and once they'd regained their balance Spy was hurrying them toward the closed door he had seen from above.

It wasn't locked and opened into another stairwell that, rather than wrapping around and down as the other one had, this one was an almost straight shot down and forward - this one it seemed would not spit them out on the factory floor. They hurried down it, finding another closed door at its end where they paused to allow their cloaks to recharge once more.

Taking a deep breath, Spy pushed the door open; behind the door was a warehouse full of crates, some of which were open to show they contained the bits and pieces that made up the robots being assembled in the next room. This warehouse also reeked of wood and there were piles of sawdust scattered here and there, as well as reams of raw wooden planks stacked along the far wall. Another adornment of the far wall were giant saw blades hanging from chains - it seemed this temporary production facility had once been a sawmill.

Spy guided them from the doorway and began picking his way around the clusters of crates until they reached a central clear aisle that divided the warehouse in half; to their right was a segmented garage door, closed - a way out.

He almost slung Shiloh into a pile of crates in his haste to get them to cover as a few Heavybots lumbered out from the piles on crates on the other side of the aisle. Each of them carried a stack of crates and turned to go up the aisle, away from the door, no doubt carrying materials destined for the factory. When they were safely hidden from view Spy keyed off their cloaks and took a deep breath, closing his eyes.

"We need to open that door, but I have no doubt the moment we do every robot in the vicinity will descend on us," he whispered, finally releasing Shiloh's hand and absently wiping her blood off his fingers onto his shirt. "I must ask you to do something."

Shiloh pinched the fingers of her right hand over the yet-again bleeding gash in her left. "What? I get the feeling I'm not going to like it if you didn't just come out and ask it."

He smiled faintly. "I do not think you will, no. Do you see the button beside the door there?" He pointed and she leaned to look down his arm until her gaze fell on a box that had two buttons on it, with a heavy wire running to the motor above the door; she nodded after a moment. "I am going to distract the robots, you are going to open the door and then run."

She stared at him silently for a few breaths. "...yeah, I don't like that plan, for several reasons."

"And I do not care that you do not like it. I will not be far behind you but allow me to remind you that I am armed and competent in battle, and you are neither of those things. I could have already been back at base by now if I did not have you to be concerned about."

She snorted. "I'm pretty sure drugged and unconscious men wouldn't be going anywhere but if you want that door open I'll get that door open, ass."

"When you hear me fire, cloak and go. Do not wait for me - I will find you afterward."

She offered him a sullen glare in response, then crouched lower as he slipped from behind the crates and dashed, uncloaked, into the middle aisle. He raised his pistol and fired three times into the air; the Heavybots they had seen earlier dropped their crates with a crash and turned in a flurry of buzzing reminiscent of the humming that had come from the blue spy's little metal disc.

"Gentlemen," Spy said, turning and dashing off into the maze of crates, away from Shiloh.

Shiloh meanwhile was already moving, her cloak in place and vaulting over the crates to sprint for the door. She slammed a palm into the button with an arrow on it that pointed up, and then the garage door began to grind open. Most of the Heavybots had gone to pursue Spy, but a single one turned to stare at the opening door, still buzzing. 

Shiloh dropped to the floor and rolled under the door, finding herself on a loading dock that had...what were those, tanks? They were some sort of blocky, box-like vehicles with antennae on top and two sets of treads for propulsion underneath. She dashed off between them as from the building behind another alarm began to wail; fifty feet away from the loading dock she could see forest - trees would mean cover and cover would mean less chance of being shot in the back as she sprinted blindly into the woods, the sounds of metal feet clanking along behind her.

She glanced down at the watch on her wrist - her cloak would not remain up long enough to reach the tree line.

Shit.


	13. Ch 13 - Not my Week

After what felt like a maddeningly long time there was the crunch of tires on gravel and, a few minutes later, Sniper came skidding down the side of the ravine with Engineer following along and the rest of the mercenaries remaining up with the truck.

Engineer paused when he reached the bottom, setting his toolbox on the ground to put hands on hips, eying the tank. "So it was just sitting here, huh? Always wanted to find one of these things intact so I could take the dang thing apart myself. Anyway, where's that blown up teleporter?"

"Yeah, it's inside here," Scout piped up from where he sat in the open door of the tank. "So's the Engineerbot that blasted it."

"Budge it, boy." Engineer shooed Scout from the door and then got inside the tank himself, squatting on his haunches and poking at the bot and the teleporter remains. "I might...be able to do something with this. Pass my toolbox in, someone."

Sniper hefted the box and brought it over, scooting it in toward Engineer before stepping back to lean against the frame of the door; he watched as Engineer pulled tools out of the box and began disassembling what was left of the teleporter, carefully examining every little piece as he methodically took everything apart. Finally, he pried apart the last remaining piece of the teleporter and pulled out what looked like a tiny circuit board, or maybe it was a computer chip - it was flat and thin, about the size of Engineer's palm, and had visible circuits and prongs along its surface.

It also, unfortunately, looked scorched and had a dent in one side. Engineer pressed his lips together into a thin line, carefully brushing fingers over the dent. "Well now, here's a lucky break...if this isn't as bad as it looks, I might be able to... I'll be right back." He carefully slid the little circuit wafer into a front pocket, then climbed out of the tank and back up the ravine; when he returned he had a separate compact box, one that contained one of his own teleporters. It only took a few minutes for the telporter to unpack itself and then there it sat, gently spinning but not fully activated; Engineer opened a panel on one end of the central spinning arm and began counting along a line of little circuit boards almost identical to the one tucked into his pocket.

He stopped at the 12th one and removed it from the teleporter, holding it up to compare it side by side to the one in his pocket.

"All right, someone go get Pyro, I think I've got half a plan in mind."

"We don't need half a plan, we need an entire plan," Sniper growled. "We might even be too late already."

"I'm aware of that, Sniper, but I'm defaulting to the quickest plan I can think of, and this might not even work." Engineer held the circuit board up again, lower lip caught lightly between his teeth. "Look - if the other end of the teleporter is still active and if I this board holds up long enough we can use my teleporter entrance and link to their teleporter on the other end. That's a big couple 'ifs' though - not going to lie, boys, this is a long shot."

Scout snorted. "And if it don't work?"

Engineer began slotting the dented and scorched board in. "Well, if it doesn't work, I only see three other options: one, I see if this tank thing here has some sort of autopilot to take us back to where it came from. Two, we search the entire damn mountain. Three, uh...well, we give up and go home."

"Yeah, no, option three sucks, option two ain't great either but it doesn't suck as hard as three. You really think a teleporter is going to work?"

Engineer shrugged, closing the panel and wiping his hand on the front of his coveralls. "Might. Might also not do anything at all, might also just kill you. Won't know until I fire it up and we give it a try."

Scout stared at him, expression stony. "Seriously?"

Engineer ignored him and pulled a remote out of the box the teleporter had been stored in and began to key in commands. "Well, here goes nothing, boys." After a moment the teleporter began to spin up, beginning to glow as its speed increased and that familiar whirring noise grew in volume. For several minutes Engineer simply silently watched the teleporter spin, jaw set, then finally he inhaled and blew out a noisy exhale. "Looks stable, seems the other end is still up and running. Well...who's up to see if they can make it through?"

Soldier snapped a hand up in a salute, quick enough that his knuckles actually thunked into his helmet. "I am ready to go charging into the teeth of the beast. Also, into a teleporter that may or may not kill me." He went to step up onto the teleporter but Engineer threw an arm out to stop him.

"Hang on, hang on, just a moment there Soldier." Engineer turned and shouted up the ravine. "HEY, PYRO. GOT YOUR FLARE GUN?"

There was an echoing, muffled reply from above, along with Pyro raising the mentioned flare gun into the air and waving it around.

"TOSS IT DOWN. NEED TO BORROW IT."

"Borrow it? For what?" Scout asked, eyes following the trail of the flare gun as it arced through the air, the gun ending up in the sand at Engineer's feet.

"Huh, nice throw..." Engineer muttered before bending to pick it up and dust it off. "Contingency plan - I really wasn't joking about the whole 'this might blow up' bit I mentioned earlier. That piece looked like it took a hit - maybe a small caliber fragment, but could have been anything - and bent up part of it. No telling how long it'll last in there, damaged as it is." He flipped the flare gun around and offered it to Soldier. "If you really plan on stepping through that thing and it ends up that we can't follow, we can at least try to narrow down what direction we need to head. Here, Soldier - take this, fire it off if you make it through."

Soldier tucked it into a leather case hanging from his belt then checked the straps holding his launcher to his back before hefting his shotgun and stepping up onto the teleporter. "Time to raise some hell, boys!" was his parting shot as the teleporter, with a grinding sputter, sent him...off, somewhere, and then as predicted-

Engineer had only a few moments to yank his hat down over his face to shield himself from the sudden shower of shrapnel as the teleporter detonated; moments later, lips pressed into a thin line, Engineer brushed metal bits off his shoulder. "Yep, saw that coming... I suggest you fellas get up to the top and watch for a flare, if he survived that trip at all. I'm going to have a look at this tank - give a shout if you see anything."

\--------------------------

The bright burst of light that occurred when a teleportation happened always managed to leave afterimages in the eyes if you hadn't closed them quickly enough. Soldier had shut his eyes but still found himself blinded when the teleporter spat him out into a dark room - a stark contrast from the light level he'd just come from - and then detonated under his feet; he stumbled forward and instinctively turned when he heard an electronic buzz, finding himself face to face with the glowing eyes of an Engineerbot.

"Not today, tin can," he growled, quickly firing two shots from the shotgun in his hands; the first tore a hole in the bot's chest cavity, the second blasted off a leg and sent the robot tumbling to the floor. Soldier finally found solid footing under himself and stepped to shoot the robot in the head point-blank; then, the man finally took a moment to look around.

He was in a very small enclosed space - the inside of a metal shed, it looked like - which explained why the shotgun blasts had been absurdly loud and had set his ears to ringing. Through the ringing however he could detect what sounded like a teleporter...but the one he'd come through had pretty much blown up under his feet and was currently a heap of smoldering metal bits.

It was dim in here, that was for certain, and finally as he became fully adjusted to the light level he could pick out the outline of a door not five feet from him. He moved over to yank it open and rather than finding himself outside as he'd assumed he would Soldier found another tiny room nearly identical to this one - but, this other tiny room had a teleporter in it. Grinning ferally, he reloaded his shotgun and stepped up onto the next teleporter.

It turned out there was a teleporter relay set up, as three more followed the one he'd destroyed upon his exit and each one had a single Engineerbot guarding it when he appeared; the final teleporter spat him out into what looked like one of the giant tanks the robots used as a means of transportation, and this one lacked any robot, Engineer or otherwise, overseeing it. Soldier was alone in the back of an empty tank, and very faintly through its metal walls he could hear the sounds of gunfire and an alarm.

"Here I come, ladies - well, lady. And Spy." He shouldered his launcher, moved to the rear of the tank, and threw the lever to set the back hatch grinding open. He was almost dancing in anticipation.

\-----------------------------------------------

She made it about halfway to the treeline when the cloak fell off; the sounds of metal feet behind her became louder as she was noticed and then pursued. Whatever was behind her was approaching rapidly and she sincerely doubted she could outrun it, based on how quickly it was gaining on her.

At this point in time her options were limited - she had no idea where Spy was and he'd run off in the opposite direction besides; she had given Spy the knife she'd had on her, so she wasn't armed; all she really had at her disposal was a watch that turned her intermittently invisible, and what amounted to a giant metal shackle on her left wrist that was supposed to turn her invisible but didn't work. In terms of 'things useful when being chased by murderous robots' all of those things were pretty damn usele-

Something suddenly crashed into the backs of her knees and feet and she immediately went sprawling, hitting the ground hard and being jarred hard enough that she bit deeply into her own bottom lip and had the breath blasted out of her. There was a metallic clang next to her head and, in a daze from the fall, turned her head to see a metal bat laying on the ground beside her - that must have been what hit her from behind.

Desperately she looked at the watch on her wrist - still recharging. No, no no no...

\---------------------------------------

Soldier came screaming out of the tank, both literally and in terms of speed, and came around the vehicle to survey his new battlefield. A few things were immediately noticed: 1. he recognized where he was. 2. There was a solid wave of Scoutbots rushing in his general direction. And 3. Shiloh was sprawled on her stomach twenty feet away, looking dazed and was apparently the target of the oncoming Scoutbots.

"Duck and cover, woman!" he bellowed, swapping to his launcher and lifting it to aim. 

Two rockets fired at the bots' feet sent the entire group flying in all directions, with only the ones at the back of the pack remaining intact; the bots that took the full brunt of his first two rounds blew apart in a shower of metal scrap and what was left of their bodies tripped up the ones behind them, giving Soldier more than enough time to fire a third rocket into their midst and finish off all but two or three. "On your feet recruit!"

Shiloh was picking herself up off the ground, one hand scrabbling in the dirt until it closed around the handle of a bat laying nearby. "...how the hell-"

"Where is our Spy?" She gestured with the bat toward the building and he grinned. "Perfect! Let's go blow up some robots."

She gave him a deer-in-headlights look. "Are you insane? Do I look like a merc to you? I'm not even armed-" She flinched as bullets tore into the ground at her feet, Soldier turning to send the last loaded rocket in his launcher at the doorway leading into the building.

"Get over here soldier! That's an order!"

He dropped back to the relative cover the tank provided and waited until she'd scrambled over toward him; he unsnapped the strap that held his shotgun to his side and offered it to her. Again she simply stared at him.

"You're joking right?"

"Take this and put it to use or die. These are your choices."

She let the bat drop and took the gun, then stood holding it like it was going to blow up in her hands while he began shoving rockets back into the launcher. "Uh, Soldier, I don't think I can pump this-"

He looked over and saw her trying to get incredibly bloody, dirtied fingers of her left hand to wrap properly around the pump. "What's wrong?" She held up her hand, palm facing him, revealing a stab wound that went entirely through the palm; he grunted and dug a hand into the leather case on his left hip. He felt around through the mess of shells, bullets, discarded grenade pins, and a few half-smoked cigars, then pulled out a rumpled, not-quite-clean handkerchief. "Hand." 

When she offered him her stabbed hand he used his thumb to wipe away the worst of the blood and grit, then tightly tied the handkerchief around her palm. "All right, that'll handle the blood and any slipping. Work those fingers and get that hand warmed up, we're going inside to get our Spy. And here-" He unclipped the case hanging at the small of his back and shoved that at her too. "Shells, and here's how you reload.... All right, we've got everything we need to wreck some havoc, let's move!"

With that he popped out from beside the tank and fired a rocket at the cluster of Scoutbots and Medicbots rushing from the warehouse doorway. Admittedly he was a bit confused when a very human scream came from their midst.

\------------------------------------

Spy had led the bots on a quick chase through the hallways and out onto the factory floor, purposely remaining visible as long as he dared to keep them focused on him and not on Miss MacKenna, who would hopefully have escaped out the door by now. He'd had some reservations about telling her to run for it, mainly because he wasn't actually certain how he'd find her once he made his own escape, but as more robots joined in chasing him - including ones fresh off the assembly line, not even painted yet - his reservations evaporated and he actually envied Shiloh at current...well, he envied anyone not being shot at by twenty or more robots at current.

He had not seen the blue spy or seen any sign of his passing as he'd gone rushing around trying to avoid being killed - extracting him from this mess was out of the question if he couldn't be located, and in the man's own words it was far more important for the other two to get out and carry the information he'd given them somewhere it could be used and acted on.

The time to end this chase was quickly approaching...surely by now Shiloh would be far enough away to not be an immediate worry, and at any rate Spy had no interest in such an undignified death. Time to make an exit...

There was an open doorway up ahead of him, which he charged through and then immediately swung himself against the wall just inside it, activating his cloak even as he sucked in his breath and pressed himself flat to the wall. As expected the Scoutbots chasing him careened into the room and pulled up short, glancing around the room to try and locate him; Spy very carefully inched along the wall and ducked back out into the hallway to begin running back the way he'd come; his ultimate goal was to hurry back down to the warehouse and get out that open door with a secondary goal of somehow finding Shiloh out in the woods and then getting back to their base with both of them in one piece.

One step at a time, he supposed.

He emerged from the hallway back into the warehouse just as his watch beeped softly in warning - his cloak was about to fail and he'd been stripped of his disguise kit when he'd been captured...damn it. Looking about he settled for huddling under the staircase, pressed as far back into the shadows as he could manage with one hand tightly gripping the pistol he'd been given and the other tilted so he could watch in uncomfortable silence as the cloaker recharged.

The instant it was ready he hit it and hurried toward the door...and from somewhere ahead of him he could hear the muted sound of something exploding, an odd thing to hear - odd and somewhat alarming, as his thoughts immediately jumped to where Shiloh may have gone... But the female had no means of blowing anything up, it was simply impossible.

Spy skidded to a halt then as a compliment of Scoutbots trailed by Medicbots cut in front of him, rushing out from behind a wall of crates that had blocked his view of them - he'd almost blundered right into them, and certainly would have been caught if he'd not waited for his cloak... Well, crisis averted he supposed; he slipped in behind the group, letting their clanking footsteps mask his own. They came out from the doorway and in a split instant Spy became aware that perhaps being within range of the robots was not the greatest idea.

A rocket suddenly slammed into the middle of the grouping of robots, blowing them to pieces and showering Spy with sharp and superheated metal shrapnel; the shockwave from the explosion picked up the man and threw him violently backwards to slam sideways into the frame of the warehouse door, and he screamed as his knee emitted a wet pop and pain shot up his limb. Even worse was he'd slammed his wrist into the wall as well and now his cloak had fallen off - thank god he'd kept hold of his pistol, but now he was injured and also very much visible.

Fighting through the pain shooting up his leg he rolled over and tried to shove himself to his feet; the knee that had popped so disconcertingly a moment ago proved itself incapable of supporting any sort of weight being placed on it, sending him falling sideways and onto his good knee.

"Merde..." he gasped, grabbing the warehouse's wall to try and leverage himself into a sitting position.

\-----------------------------------------

Shiloh, from where she was huddled against the side of the tank, peeked out and around it when she heard the scream. Soldier had paused in firing, the tip of his launcher drooping down toward the ground as he peered ahead in confusion; Shiloh's gaze first fell on a pile of blown apart robots, but beyond that there was a figure struggling to right itself just outside of the warehouse doorway.

She watched as Spy tried to stand, fell over, and then pulled himself into a sitting position against the wall, visibly pained but extending his pistol to aim at something out of sight within the warehouse.

"Ah shit...new plan, you take this-" she tossed the shotgun to Soldier as the male turned toward her, then she bent to pick the bat back up. "Do not shoot me." With that she dashed out from around the tank and tore across the open area to jump up onto the loading dock, sprinting toward Spy as the man shot a few times at something out of view inside.

"Are you insane?" he spat at her as she threw herself flat against the wall just behind him.

"Probably, get up," she reached forward to hook an arm under his right as a Scoutbot popped out around the door frame at them. Spy shot at it as Shiloh swung the bat in a one-handed, upward swing that caught the bot's weapon even as Spy's bullet struck it between its glowing eyes. Spy then used his good leg to leverage himself backward, lifting his arm to allow Shiloh to get a handhold.

She bent down as she tugged him upward and he pushed with one leg, getting his arm up over her shoulder before she straightened and began half-dragging, half-carrying the slender man away from the doorway. He emptied the magazine in his gun and ejected it, then simply tossed the pistol away - he wouldn't have been able to reload it anyway with only one hand.

"MOVE, Miss MacKenna-"

"-I got you covered, soldier, get back in that tank!"

Soldier was suddenly there, his shotgun ripping apart the few Scoutbots that came running at them as Shiloh dragged Spy off the loading dock, moving in a staggering run as Soldier covered their retreat.

"Where's the other guy? Javier?"

Spy shook his head and grimaced as his bad leg was jarred against the extended hatch of the tank as Shiloh swung them around behind the tank and into the relative safety of the cover it provided. "I do not know and we are not in any position to find out. He has survived this long on his own, he will have to continue to do so."

Shiloh pulled Spy up the hatch and into the rear of the tank, panting heavily; Soldier jumped in behind them and slammed a fist onto a lever that set the hatch to close.

"All right, men - our destination is that teleporter!" He jabbed a finger ahead of them to where, not ten feet away, was a little spinning, glowing disc-shaped object on a base.

Shiloh's mouth worked open and shut for a moment, no sound coming out, before finally "a what?"

Soldier pumped the shotgun, ejecting a few spent shells and slotting in new ones. "Teleporter. It's how I got here and how we're getting out of here. Got a little parting gift for the tin cans, eheheh..." 

"Now is not the time to question, Miss MacKenna," Spy grunted, getting his good leg under him and beginning to assist Shiloh in hobbling forward to it. "Help me up onto it, then follow immediately."

Wordlessly she did as instructed, Spy balancing uneasily on the disc before, in a flash of light and a rush of displaced air, disappearing from view. Shiloh gave the disc an uncertain, dubious look, but was spurred into movement when, from the hatch behind them, there were several metallic thuds.

"Hurry woman, we do not want to be pinned down in here, not when my parting gift goes off."

"Uh-" she stepped up onto the teleporter, turning to face Soldier in time to see him pluck the two grenades off the strap across his chest. "-you're seriously going to-"

Mid-sentence she was gone and Soldier stepped up to take her spot on the teleporter, using the thumbs on each hand to casually pop the grenade pins loose and drop them to the floor.

"See you in hell, robot scum!"

He did, of course, regret not being able to see the carnage as the teleporter whisked him away.

\----------------------------------------------

Spy was slumped against the wall when Shiloh appeared in...wherever she was now. It was dim, dark, and the floor beneath her boots clanked as she stepped off the teleporter.

"...I'm not going to ask how this thing works, or is even possible."

"Good, because I could not begin to explain the science behind it," Spy replied wearily. He did not object when Shiloh moved over to sling his arm over her shoulders again. "This has not been my week."

"Yeah, like mine has been any better," she snorted.

He shook his head, then suddenly smirked. "You do seem to be handling the situation well, Miss MacKenna...far better than I would have imagined."

"Oh, just wait for the panic to catch up to me," she said, attempting a light and joking tone but squeaking a bit on the last words. "I'm trying very hard to convince myself I'm just in a coma...maybe I fell off a cliff, busted my head. I'm exceptionally talented at falling off cliffs."

"Ah, and now it is my turn to assert that I will not ask."

"The fact I'm still alive and not crippled should be a testament to how talented I am at falling from great heights. On a related note, always trust your footing before you continue up or down a rockface."

"Noted." He let Shiloh guide him away from the wall and toward a door that had the barest hint of light coming through the crack beneath the door. His knee was throbbing, his leg useless from the knee down; he sincerely hoped he had only dislocated something, not shattered his kneecap.

A surge of anger toward Soldier rose in his mind and he swallowed hard, then inhaled and exhaled slowly to drive it back down. It was not Soldier's fault he had not known Spy was there...it didn't change the fact that Soldier had caused this injury, but it did make him want to murder the man less.

There was a burst of light and noise from behind them, followed by Soldier's grating laugh, and Spy took another calming breath before speaking. "Where are we now, Soldier?"

"A shed."

Oh good, now the anger was warring with a sense of annoyance. "...a shed where?"

"In the woods. To reach you I came through several teleporters chained together - each one was inside a shed and guarded by a single Engineerbot. I broke the robots but left the teleporters."

"So we can return to wherever you arrived from via teleporters?"

"Yes! ...wait, no. The first teleporter is broken. Also I have just remembered that I was supposed to shoot off a flare to signal to the others where I ended up at."

Shiloh grimaced as Spy dug fingers into her shoulder while visibly gritting his teeth. His tone was all but dripping in barely suppressed anger as he finally spoke again. "Where is the next teleporter? How far will we go?"

"It is in the next room unless something broke it. Speaking of which, I blew up the teleporter behind me so we will not be followed."

"At least you managed that, you simpleton," Spy hissed. "Miss MacKenna, if you would...?"

"Yeah yeah, I got you," she muttered, removing her arm from where she'd wrapped it around Spy's waist to tug the door open. The next room was slightly better lit, though no bigger than the room they stood in. Up ahead of them was another little spinning teleporter.

They stepped through a couple more until they ended up in a shed that held only some crates, the teleporter they'd come through, and a deactivated teleporter that looked like it had spontaneously combusted. Soldier felt around in the darkness until he found a second door and then kicked it open to reveal forest beyond it.

The sun was rapidly setting as they finally stepped out into the fresh air; Soldier removed a flare gun from his belt and fired it straight into the air while Shiloh carefully lowered Spy into a sitting position against the shed's wall before kneeling beside him.

"You all right?"

"I am hoping it is a simple dislocation and nothing more," he grumbled. "As I said, this has not been my week."

She gestured at a few bits of metal embedded in his abdomen, with tiny spots of blood soaking into the shirt around them. "Nothing penetrated worse than this, right?"

"Not that I can tell."

Carefully she tugged the metal shards free then tugged his shirt out of his pants before unbuttoning it and pulling it open to quickly look at the cuts in what was left of the sunlight and the fading light from the flare.

"They don't look too deep, just press your arm in against them to keep them closed," she said after a moment, rebuttoning his shirt.

Spy braced his shoulders against the wall behind him and lifted his hips up long enough to quickly tuck his shirt back in. "I am not worried about a bit of blood. Your concern is, however, noted."

She dropped to sit beside him, unwinding a dirty handkerchief from her left hand and flexing the dirty, bloody appendage. "Still have that knife?"

He removed it from his pocket and handed it to her. She mumbled a thanks and then used the knife to slice off the cleanest segment of the handkerchief before folding it and pressing it to the cut on his cheek; he hadn't even realized it was bleeding again and muttered an equally quiet thank you to her as he reached to shoo her hand away and hold the handkerchief bit himself.

"Now what?" she asked into the silence that followed.

Soldier snapped the flare gun back onto his belt. "I know this area - Spy should know where we are too."

Spy gave the man a look of pure annoyance. "I was a little more concerned with not meeting my end than I was at admiring the scenery, Soldier."

Soldier jerked a thumb over a shoulder at the trees around them. "Didn't you recognize that warehouse? That base? That was one of OUR bases."

Shiloh gave Spy a curious look as the man stiffened, his eyes narrowing.

"One of ours...you are certain?"

"I am absolutely as positive as I can be."

Spy rubbed his chin, gritting his teeth. "I have a most sudden, terrible suspicion then..."

Shiloh looked between the two men. "What? What suspicion?"

"Our ally within the warehouse said his entire team was captured," Spy said quietly, turning to look at her, expression grim. "The other team would know of our base locations - we battled at many of them several times over the years - and if they knew, and were captured..."

Soldier let out a growl. "Our bases are compromised?"

"This is my suspicion."

Shiloh pulled her knees to her chest and rested her forehead against them. "So we're potentially not safe anywhere."

"Oui."

"Then there's no time to waste sitting around here. There's a road-"

"In what direction, Soldier?" Spy interrupted, tone finally fully betraying his irritation. "We are in the middle of the forest, and while I am aware there is a road that led to that base we do not know where we are in relation to it."

Shiloh lifted her head. "Was the road cleared through the trees?"

"Uh, yes. I believe so. Logging road - that warehouse was once a sawmill."

Shiloh stood up, wrapping what was left of the handkerchief around her hand. "I'll climb up a tree and have a look. Do you have any more flares?"

"I have a single flare left."

She held out her hand and Soldier slapped the flare gun into it. "Let's go find a tree."

\---------------------------------------

"There, you see it?!"

Demoman pointed at the tiniest flicker of light in the distance, to the northwest.

"I saw it," Heavy agreed. "Soldier is that way, but very far from us."

"Let's get moving then," Sniper said, jogging over to the edge of the ravine. "Engy! Let's get moving, we got a flare!"

A few minutes later Engineer was scaling up the rocks, his progress slowed by having to make two trips to retrieve his toolbox and what was left of his teleporter. "Where's it at?"

"Northwest of here and quite a ways away."

"Right then, let's move it out boys."

"Think he found them?" Sniper asked quietly as they piled back into the truck.

"I think with Spy being with her there's a good chance - and now Soldier's hopefully with 'em too," Engineer said, dropping onto one of the benches that ran the length of the back of the truck, leaning to pull the back door shut. "Where'd you say that flare came up again?"

"Northwest of- ...son of a bitch."

Engineer, along with Scout and Demoman, gave Sniper an odd look. "Son of a bitch?"

Sniper pounded a fist into a palm. "What's northwest of here? Anyone besides me remember?" He was met with silence and blank stares. "...I hated that damn area? Too many trees, too much open space inside the building?"

Scout rolled his eyes. "Wait wait wait, you don't think they're at that stupid base of ours that's up in that way? That stupid old sawmill, we smelled like burnt sap and sawdust for months after we left?" 

"Yeah, that, that exactly. We left it and never went back to it, but that doesn't mean it disappeared off the map because we weren't using it. It's the only place around that'd be a ready-made hiding place."

Engineer moved to tap on the sliding window that opened into the cab of the truck; Pyro slid the window open, Heavy sitting in the driver's seat and focused on avoiding the worst of the rock outcroppings.

"Hey Heavy, you remember that old sawmill base up the mountains there?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Head there...we think we have a reasonable idea of where-"

Engineer trailed off as, tracing a bright path in the sky ahead of them, a second flare was fired off; this one went much higher than the first one for some reason, and so was much more visible.

"-reasonable idea of where they might be," Engineer finished. "Head that way."


	14. Ch 14 - Stumbling in the Dark

There was a slight shower of bark and needles as Shiloh came back down the pine tree, the empty flaregun tucked into a back pocket; Spy and Soldier waited silently until she was back on the ground.

"Did you see a road?"

"From up there it was pretty impossible to miss, even with the crappy light," she replied, handing the flare gun back to Soldier. "Assuming there's only the one road to see, there's this big stretch of snapped and damaged trees, I'm guessing if those robots drove those tanks up the road-"

"-they didn't fit but didn't care," Soldier finished. He tipped his helmet back and peered up at the sky. "I do not have a light and it is getting dark. Suggestions?"

"Not afraid of the dark, are you?" Shiloh asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

"Nothing scares this man, but I do like to see what I'm shooting at."

Shiloh offered Spy her hand and tugged him to his feet before sliding an arm around his waist. "Even if robots can see and we can't, we're going to hear them coming before anyone can see anyone else."

"How far away is the road?" Spy asked, putting his arm over her shoulders with a grimace as the cuts in his side pulled open. "Can we even reach it before it becomes fully dark?"

She shifted to settle his arm more comfortably. "Even if we don't it's not going to matter, I know where I'm going - just stay behind me Soldier, and try not to trip."

"You sound more confident than I feel," Spy muttered.

She gave him a sort of half-grin. "Getting around in the woods is sort of my thing, trust me."

"As if we have any other choice."

Rolling her eyes she began to walk, winding through the trees carefully; the going was slow since she had to account for where her feet were as well as Spy's but soon enough they found themselves picking their way through shattered, twisted, and uprooted tree remnants. There was a wide swath cut through the trees here, giving them a clear view of the sky above where there wasn't even the barest sliver of a moon visible; they had to navigate the mess in darkness until finally their feet hit the packed dirt of what had to be the road.

"See? Road," Shiloh said, panting a bit. Spy wasn't heavy - he maybe weighed the same as her duffel bag - but carrying him along was somewhat awkward and put her off-balance. "The factory-warehouse-base thing is at our backs."

"You are certain?" Spy asked, squinting in the dark.

She nodded. "I walked in a straight line from where we were to here, the base was always to my right so that puts it at our back right now."

Soldier began heading down the road and then promptly stumbled. "Watch your footing men, there's tread tracks in the dirt."

"Really? Good."

Spy gave her a questioning look. "How is that good?"

"If there's tracks then we won't blunder off the road if we stick to them, and there's going to be a lot of noise made if something drives over them."

Spy smiled wearily. "Thinking as a mercenary would, I approve."

She snorted and began down the road. "I'm thinking like someone who'd rather not be caught and murdered."

"One and the same, Miss MacKenna."

\--------------------------------------

"What in the blazes happened to this road?" Engineer muttered, his face framed in the little window that opened into the cab of the truck. "Looks like a damn tornado went through here."

The headlights of the truck made the white of the snapped wood stand out harshly against the dark, and the truck itself was shaking and vibrating as it rumbled over deep tracks in the dirt road.

"Tank tracks," Heavy said quietly, as Engineer pressed in against the window frame to get a better look out the windshield. "Would seem tank came through, did not fit. Is likely we run into tank at base."

Engineer chuckled and pulled away from the window to sit back down on the bench; across from him sat Demoman and Medic, both wearing nearly identical stony expressions. "We might not want to be in the truck when we find that tank."

"I'm more wondering how the hell we're going to find Soldier, Spy, and Shiloh in the dark, in the woods, and with robots and tanks and other stupid crap moving around," Scout snorted. "We ain't heard anything, right?"

"Well no, I don't think so. Been a pretty quiet ride so far."

Scout leaned back against the wall behind him, stretching out to rest his feet on the bench across from him. "Yeah, exactly. And I bet the three of 'em are going to be hiding if they're even alive - Soldier might be stupid enough to take on a base of robots on his own but I think Spy's got half a brain enough to get Shiloh out of there. We're not thinking we're just going to drive up there and find them waiting on us on top of a pile of blown up robots, are we?"

"'course not," Sniper grunted. "We're not bloody stupid."

"We are most certainly going to be seen if we simply drive up to the base," Medic finally spoke up. "We make for an exceptionally easy target."

"Aye, and we don't have a Spy to sneak up and see what's what for us, either," Demoman chimed in. "I'm not one to shy from a fight, but taking one right up the nose isn't my style."

"Not one of us ever said we'd just drive on up there," Engineer interjected dryly. "We're headed in that direction, sure, and we think they might be there, but none of that is really concrete is it? Might be that base is as abandoned as its ever been, we won't know until we get there."

"Look, it's dark - we're not getting anywhere near there without being seen," Sniper said, leaning forward and resting hands on his knees. "And there's not enough light out there for us to turn the headlights off either - we're riding up there with two 'we're right bloody here' beams of light shooting out the front of this truck. We might as well quit pointing that out and start thinking on how to still take any threats by surprise even if they know we're coming."

Scout elbowed the Australian. "What are you, stupid? We can't ambush something that knows we're coming."

Sniper returned the elbowing twice as hard. "Then you must not have much holding that hat up-"

"Easy, easy fellas," Engineer broke in, cracking his knuckles. "I think I might have an idea to that effect."

\--------------------------------------------

"Something's coming up the road."

Shiloh paused as she said it, holding her breath to momentarily silence the panting she was doing. In the silence that followed Spy tilted his head and closed his eyes, straining to listen - he could hear insects around them, leaves rustling and things moving about in the underbrush.

"Are you certain?"

She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. "You can't hear that?"

"I hear many things, if you mean the sounds of something moving through leaves."

She shook her head. "Hold your breath, listen - hear that?" Again she sucked in a breath and held it - she too was hearing the insects, the leaves, and things moving about, but under that and very faintly...

"...yes, I believe I hear what you are referencing," Spy said finally. "Something is coming up the road toward us - perhaps the others, or so I greatly hope." It really was extremely faint, but once his ears had picked up the sound of an engine running he could pick it out among the other sounds among the woods. "That it is coming from that direction and not the base behind us is a boon, at the least."

Soldier grunted. "I don't hear anything. And what if it's not them?"

"Miss MacKenna, do you think you could navigate us to the side of the road without someone ending up impaled on a tree?"

"Fairly certain, yeah. You're wanting to hide and see what's coming?"

Spy nodded. "Indeed, and even though you are doing much of the legwork I do feel I need to sit a moment and rest my leg." He didn't bother to add that he'd noticed his side was bleeding again, nor was he particularly keen on Shiloh noticing such.

"All right then...uh, here, Soldier-" She stuck an arm out, fingertips brushing the man's sleeve. "-you support him for a moment, I'm going to fumble a path through this crap."

Spy settled for balancing on his good leg with a hand resting on Soldier's shoulder to steady himself - he was not about to allow the man to carry him - and then they stood and waited, listening to the sounds of Shiloh moving about nearby; her breathing and the sounds of brush and leaves being shoved and kicked out of the way easily drowned out the sound of the approaching engine but soon Shiloh was back reaching to take Spy's arm and, with the silence returning, the sound of the engine was even louder - loud enough that even Soldier could hear it.

With an arm around Spy and a hand gripping Soldier's elbow, she guided them through the narrow path she'd made through the tree debris - there were a few large logs she hadn't been able to move and so they had to carefully climb over them, but some minutes later they were crouched together at the base of a giant ash tree.

They waited without speaking, the only sounds being that of the woods around them and the soft sounds of their own breathing.

\---------------------------------------------

In the control room of the factory there were only two fixtures - a bank of computers with a control panel, and a large teleporter that had remained inactive for nearly two months. Today, however, the teleporter began to glow and spin, and without fanfare a figure appeared atop the spinning disc.

It was a robot, built wide in the shoulders and wrapped in a hooded shawl of pastel purple fabric that covered it from shoulders to ankles, masking any other distinguishing features. Its feet clanked as it stepped down, glowing eyes surveying the gathering in the room - reports showed that a great many units had been deactivated at this site, and the robots clustered into this room may very well be the only ones remaining here aside from the pieces not yet assembled into functioning units that were stored down on the factory floor.

"-Hail Flagship.-" came the buzzed greeting from the group, all standing in stand by mode and awaiting orders.

Flagship scanned them briefly - these units were functioning properly. Good. That taken care of, the robot's gaze dropped to the pile of meat in the floor at its feet.

It was a human in a filthy blue suit, crumpled into a ball and laying in a pool of blood. Its face was bruised and beaten to the point that the man could barely peer out of one eye up at Flagship as it bent down to regard him.

"-Status.-" the shawl-wrapped robot buzzed.

A Medicbot rolled forward a few inches. "-Diagnosis: human. Male. Alive. Related: injuries life-threatening - death imininent within hours if not assisted.-"

Flagship tilted its head this way and that, then reached down to prod the male in the cheek with the blunt edge of a knuckle. The man did not respond, or perhaps could not respond - he was, after all, badly injured - but Flagship stood and pressed its metal hands together, lightly tapping fingertips against one another.

"Oh dear, I do hope he makes the trip back home to brother dearest. He has been searching for you, you see."

The man's one visible eye widened at the sickeningly sweet, airy, female voice coming from the robot.

Flagship bent down to lock a hand under the man's armpit and effortlessly lift him; the man let out a pained moan and feebly tried to push away but Flagship pulled him closer and in an almost tender gesture held him close to its metal chest.

"There there... And the other? The woman? Do you know where she has gone?"

The man's one good eye shut and he remained silent. Flagship nodded, seeming almost sad.

"Well all right then, I still have the more important piece. My brother is a bit eccentric, you see - he must have goals to drive him forward. Imagine the delights and deliriums this will push him to! It is almost a blessing in disguise that the dear girl escaped."

The robot stroked a hand through the man's matted hair, then turned its face up to the gathering of robots. "And as for you, dearies, I'm afraid I have unfortunate news. Brother does not accept failure - he didn't program you for failure, you see - and so here are your new orders."

As Flagship turned to carry the captured spy toward the teleporter, it resorted to quickly relaying the orders through the control transmitters.

"-Designation: Return Package. Objective: evacuate viable materials - coordinates to follow broadcast. Completion of task: set charges and deactivate.-"

Flagship carefully settled the man onto the teleporter and waited patiently for the teleporter to perform its function before stepping up and turning to face the remaining robots.

"-Initiate.-"

The robots turned in unison as Flagship broadcast the coordinates for drop off of whatever remaining production materials were here - they would complete the task of moving everything out within the hour, and then set explosives to bring the entire warehouse crashing down on itself. No reason to leave a trail, after all.

\--------------------------------------------

Headlights were visible now, and Soldier had made the decision to stand at the edge of the road - visible, but not IN the road - and wait it out to see who, exactly was coming. Shiloh and Spy remained crouched at the base of the ash, grim and silent, as time seemed to drag and slow to a standstill.

Finally the headlights lit up the figure of Soldier by the road, and the vehicle stopped with a door opening.

"Soldier?"

"It is in fact me. Is that our Heavy and not a robot impersonator?"

There was the sound of two more doors opening, and then the noise of several people exiting a vehicle. Soldier shielded his eyes against the glaring light of the headlights and stood there as they approached him; Shiloh and Spy could see little more than backlit figures, mere silhouettes, but they could hear voices - if these were robots, they were spot-on in their impersonation.

"Soldier, you damn idiot - where's Spy? Where's Shiloh? What the hell are you doing?"

Scout's voice carried and Shiloh smirked a bit as Spy pinched the bridge of his nose. "That has to be them - no robot could possibly be programmed to be so grating."

"If you are robots I am here by myself."

"Soldier, cut the crap - where's Spy and Shiloh?"

Shiloh slid Spy's arm off her shoulders and stood. "Back here," she called around the tree before stepping out from behind it. There was a scuffing of boots in the dirt as the mercenaries turned around to look at her, then there was a flurry of movement as Sniper, Scout, and Medic all together waded into the mess of wooden debris toward her.

"Are you two all right?" Sniper asked, vaulting over a log and reaching the tree first, the other two still navigating through the splinters.

"We're breathing, if that counts," Shiloh replied, leaning a shoulder against the trunk. "Spy's in pretty bad shape."

Medic stopped attempting to get to them and began to pick his way back toward the road. "Get them both out of there and to the truck, I will look them over there where there is actually light to work by."

"You grab him, I've got her," Sniper said, giving Scout a push around the tree trunk.

Shiloh raised an eyebrow, looking at him. "You've 'got me' eh? I'll point out now that I'M the one who carried Spy here, not the other way around. This damsel is not in a lot of distress, thanks."

Sniper opened his mouth to reply, but then pressed his lips together and spun on his heel to stomp around the tree and help Scout get Spy back onto his feet. It took the two of them to manuever the third out to the road - apparently Shiloh's little path wasn't so readily noticeable in the shadows cast by the headlights - with Shiloh following along behind. In the harsh light from the truck Spy looked absolutely awful but Medic ushered both him and Shiloh into the back of the truck and began poking and prodding at their injuries.

Shiloh scooted to the end of the bench that lined one side of the truck and sat with her elbows propped on her knees, bent over with her head in her hands and her feet dangling off the edge of the truck's floor. Outside she could hear Soldier as he told the others about his little trip through the teleporters and his rescue of Spy and Shiloh; she nearly twitched herself off the bench when Sniper seemed to just appear out of the dark next to her.

"You all right?"

"Bruised, bloody, can't work my left hand, but like I said - still breathing," she replied quietly.

"What the hell happened? I thought you were right behind me."

"I was until a robot dragged me through a window and drugged me." She reached up to pull the neck of her shirt down, displaying the bruise at her collarbone. "It's kind of hazy after that but I think Spy jumped through after me...then I woke up stuffed into a locker and by the way the rest of this is a long story that I think everyone needs to hear at once."

"Yes, it is," Spy called from where he was laying on one of the benches with Medic tending to the cuts along his side. "Once again this situation has gotten stupidly difficult."

Sniper's gaze had flicked over Shiloh's head to Spy as the man had spoken, then dropped back down to Shiloh afterward. "...I'm sorry, sheila. For getting you dragged into this, and for letting them drag you off."

She inhaled and then exhaled, reached up to run a hand through her hair, then gave him a weak smile. "I don't even know what to say to that, to be honest...just, I guess - if I don't die or end up horribly maimed, no harm no foul?"

"You're pretty forgiving for someone with a bullseye on their back thanks to me."

"You were ordered to bring me back, right?"

Sniper shrugged. "I wouldn't have left you there regardless, it wouldn't have been right."

"The point is, you'd probably be stuck with me regardless of some nutcase trying to murder me, so uh... I'm not sure where I was going with that, actually. I think my brain's had enough for the evening," she huffed out a short laugh and put her head back into her hands.

Sniper tilted his head as a shackle-like object on her wrist caught his attention. "What's that?"

She flicked a few fingers in dismissal, head still down. "Part of the long story."

The four of them in the back of the truck flinched together as, in the distance, there was a flash of light above the trees and a resounding blast of a detonation. "The bloody hell was that?" Sniper asked, pushing away from the truck to walk around to the front.

The rest of the mercenaries were staring up the road, equally confused.

"Well lads," Demoman finally spoke up. "I'd be willing to bet a bottle on there not being a base left when we get there."


	15. Ch 15 - Betrayed

"...do you think he made it out?"

Spy inhaled slowly, opening his eyes from where he'd been dozing on the bench, sitting across from Shiloh in the back of the truck. "Mm?" He raised his head to look at her; she was rubbing fingers across the prototype cloaking device the blue spy had clamped onto her wrist.

She looked up at him after a moment of silence. "Do you think Javier made it out? That's his name, right? Javier?"

"I am sure that is A name he has used in the past, yes," he replied, voice quiet. "As for whether he made it to safety before whatever just happened, I would not be overly worried for him."

"I wouldn't be if he hadn't given me his watch too," she said after a pause, holding up her right wrist and shaking it slightly, the watch glinting in the light. "And that disguise didn't work...so he can't turn invisible, he can't hide, and it sounded like that base just blew sky high. Do you think he made it out?"

Spy grimaced. "It is hard to say. Based on what I know of him I would be inclined to say 'without a doubt.' He also survived among the enemy for an unknown amount of time, and I know he is a resourceful man. I do caution you however not to assume he freed us out of some stirring of humanity...he is driven, skilled, his loyalty laying only with his mission. If our freedom had not benefited him, you and I would be dead."

She seemed to mull that over in silence for a moment before shaking her head. "Maybe, but he did get us out of there."

He nodded, exhaling slowly. "Be thankful he saved your life, but do not mourn him - he did not save us out of the kindness of his heart." 

She scrubbed a hand through her hair, tilting her head toward the open back of the truck; outside the other mercenaries were attempting to formulate a plan on whether to go forward or to retreat and regroup. Spy had given them the barest, quickest explanation on what had occurred up at the sawmill base but even knowing that the men still seemed evenly split on what to do. "They're still going."

"And they shall until a consensus is reached, or someone throws a punch," Spy replied dryly. "I suppose I should weigh in so that we actually make a decision sometime tonight."

She slid her feet out of his way as he stood and slipped from the truck, and soon she could pick out his quiet voice among the others; now that she was sitting - not running, or being shot at, or carrying someone through the dark - a bone-deep weariness was setting in and even though she had the impossible to shake feeling of imminent danger it was currently fighting with a need to close her eyes for just a moment...

Her head was slowly drooping toward her own shoulder when there was a light touch on her sleeve; she twitched and had her fist halfway up to defend herself before noticing that it was just Soldier, a sort of anticipatory smile on his face.

"You were going to hit me?"

"Uh...probably?" she stuttered, exhaling loudly through her nose and sitting up straight. "Don't do that - I don't really do well when startled awake."

"I need you to move your legs," the male said, jumping up into the truck and sliding by her as she pulled her legs back out of his way. "We are moving out."

"Where to?" One by one the others began to climb into the back; Shiloh simply slid up the bench to lean against the wall that formed the back of the cab - it was just easier than having an entire team of men climbing over her.

"We have a plan in place, Miss MacKenna," Spy answered instead, taking a place on the bench next to Soldier. Sniper silently dropped onto the bench next to her, expression stony, with the rest of the mercs wearing nearly identical expressions as they found seats and Engineer slammed the door shut. "I suggest resting while you can, in case something unforeseen occurs."

Her only response was a quiet grunt as she leaned her head against the wall beside her. Rest...riiiiight...

\--------------------------------------

"Now, brother..." The shawl-wrapped robot Flagship gently placed a hand on the man's shoulder, sensors detecting the trembling. "You must look on the bright side my dearest - you have a Spy now, you can complete your research and finally build the machine you have been striving your entire life to build."

"It is not... It is... No one escapes me," he said quietly, his knuckles white where he gripped the railing in front of him. "I have been betrayed."

Flagship and he stood in an office that overlooked a large room; the room below them was almost painfully bright, white and sterile and with the sharp tang of disinfectants in the air. Clustered in a circle around a large bank of control panels and computer readouts were nine man-sized tubes, swathed in wires and monitors, with curved glass allowing one to peer in at the tube's occupant; there was a large smear of blood on the white tile leading up to what had until moment ago been the sole empty tube. As Flagship and the man watched, a Medicbot was diligently cleaning the blood from the floor while a second Medicbot monitored the panels attached to the tube.

"No, no one escapes you, I know this better than anyone my dear brother. And when you say betrayed you make it sound so...vulgar."

Flagship reached down to gently begin prying the man's hands from the railing; there was a foul smell and fluid leaking from the man's fingers as Flagship pulled them free, then turned them over in its own hands.

"You delayed too long treating these, lovey. And how is the flesh around your neck and head?"

The man stared down at his hands - the cuticles had split open and were weeping a mixture of blood, a clear liquid, and the hint of a pus-like substance. "Fetch my trunk. And my head..." He pulled his hat off and immediately an incredibly foul odor grew even stronger, and within the hat band there were bits of skin clinging.

Flagship make a tongue-clucking noise. "I shall fetch the trunk, did you acquire more embalming fluid or must I fetch that as well?"

He shook his head and began to stalk from the balcony, back toward the room where only he, Flagship, and an elite sect of advanced Medicbots were allowed to enter. The scent of disinfectant here at least covered the smell of rot emanating from the man's body; as he stepped through the doorway three Medicbots on the far wall activated and raised their heads to regard him.

"Usual treatment," he said softly. The Medicbots began to move about and collect tools and chemicals as he strode into the room.

This special room was crowded with cabinets and a surgical table in the center, and with a full body-length mirror installed in the ceiling above the table itself. As he moved toward the table he stripped his heavy clothing off, letting the articles fall to the ground; his shirt was sodden around the neck with foul fluids and he mentally agreed he had allowed himself to become too distracted, had allowed the rot to establish too firm a foothold.

Now naked he slid onto the table and stared upward at the mirror, eying what was left of his body; for the most part he was intact, aside from a few mechanical...alterations he had been forced to make.

The top of his head was a glass covering that revealed the brain and fluid within it, metal meeting flesh in what had been, weeks ago, a seamless surgical melding; the skin was now puffy and stank - from his ears down to his neck would need replacing, most certainly. His hands would need treatment as well, though the flesh across his chest seemed to have transplanted well and showed no sign of infection around where it met the metal casing that wrapped around his ribs.

He eyed the elegant casing, mind beginning to wander; he could extend the casing down his arms and permanently incorporate his gauntlet and ring... Yes, perhaps that would be his next step after his machine was built and his body repaired. Once that was done he could allow Mr. Mann to keep the machine.

Flagship entered the room, easily toting a metallic steamer trunk. "Brother brother brother...what shall I do with you?"

He pulled his thoughts together and turned his head to look at the robot, hearing the soft sloshing of the liquid in his head. "Mind the wires in my hands, I need them functioning properly if I'm to finish this."

Flagship walked over and ran metal fingers gently over the glass dome of his head, the motion resulting in very quiet but high-pitched scratching noises. "Have I ever failed to piece you back together, dearest? You rest and I shall handle you - just lay back and think about all the research you're doing and how wonderful it'll be to have your proper body back again."

"Perhaps I will rebuild you once I have mastered myself, sister."

Flagship tittered, metal fingers pressing against lips that weren't there. "Oh no, let's not set such lofty goals right this instant! Focus on not having an accident this time, hmm?"

He frowned, looking up into the mirror again. "I would rather not think about it."

"Then think on other more pleasant things."

The Medicbots began to cluster around as Flagship opened the steamer trunk. As he stared up into the mirror a thought from earlier came back to the forefront.

"...I was betrayed."

"Oh, now-"

"No, I was betrayed. He knew I needed them and he took him...why else but to betray me."

"I am certain Mr. Mann had his reasons - perhaps he thought he was helping you, capturing them as he did to save you the effort."

"He lost them."

Flagship tut-tutted as it moved about. "All the more reason to push the upgraded units on him, and truthfully that only happened because of that spy. Here we go dear-" it connected a rubber tube to a mask and pressed it over his face. "-you just go to sleep and let me worry about things for awhile, hmm? Everything will be as good as new when you wake up, and then you can get right back to work."

\---------------------------------------

She wasn't aware she'd dozed off until she banged her head against the wall as the truck lurched over something under it. Blinking blearily Shiloh put a hand to the bench beside her, finding it empty but still warm - Sniper had been there prior to her falling asleep, but apparently it hadn't been long since he'd moved.

Actually, now that she was awake and looking around she found that the back of the truck was empty save for her and Spy, who was stretched out on his back on the bench across from her, his head resting on an arm curled behind it.

"Where'd everyone go?"

Spy turned his head enough to look at her from the corner of his eye. "All a part of the plan, Miss MacKenna."

"Ah, yeah - that plan that no one told me."

He shrugged, the movement awkward from his prone position. "It was not required at the time."

"Is that a polite way of telling me I don't need to know?"

Chuckling slightly, he shook his head. "Ah, no, that was not my intention. I simply preferred we move quickly since we'd wasted enough time as is...and as for the plan, it is simple: myself, Scout, and Sniper are taking you somewhere we are reasonably certain the Blu team has never been, where we shall lay low and attempt to re-establish contact with Miss Pauling and the Administrator. The others are accompanying Engineer back to the base we were snatched from - they are going to retrieve as many supplies as possible, while Engineer sees what information he can glean from the tank the robots left behind."

She raised an eyebrow at that. "They left a tank behind? Just, an entire tank?"

"Yes, I was skeptical as well, but it seems this one is in miniature. If I had to guess, I would say they were either not intending us to survive to follow them - highly likely - or we followed them far more quickly than they'd anticipated." He lifted his head to rub at the back of his neck before rotating it; there were a few quiet pops, then he laid his head back down onto his arm again. "Engineer made a very good point in his argument to retrieve the tank - ever since this mess began we have been five steps behind this man... It is time to close the gap, wouldn't you agree?"

"What could he be hoping to learn from a tank?"

"I could not say, but I trust the man's instincts and intelligence. At any rate, we will need supplies...where we travel to now, it has not been used in some time, and even when we did use it it functioned only as a rear staging area. What little we may have left behind inside its walls will likely not be especially helpful in this circumstance."

She nodded, stretching her legs out in front of her and her arms over her head; after a few moments she shifted to lay down on the bench on her stomach, pillowing her head on her arms.

"Guessing Scout and Sniper are up front?"

"Mmm... Sniper thought it best you did not wake up in Scout's company."

"Oh really."

Spy chuckled quietly. "I agreed. Scout did not, but Scout does not matter. Go back to sleep, it will be some time yet before we reach our destination."


	16. Ch 16 - Money Where Your Mouth Is

The drive to their destination was a long one, on the far side of the mountains that ringed in the stretch of desert they'd just left. Shiloh was actually surprised to see that she knew this area - somewhat, anyway; they were driving up into the mountains toward a small lake in the middle of the wooded area called Dulcimer Lake - it had originally been Dull Silver Lake, a nod to the now-abandoned mine that had, through sheer luck, struck a single silver vein while mining for coal. As time had gone on, however, a little lakeside resort had opened and made a play on how 'dull silver' sounded like 'dulcimer' and had brought the instrument to the region over from the Appalachians and had subsequently turned the area into a kitschy tourist attraction.

Spy had simply looked at her in silence for a few breaths when she'd rattled off that information. "I must admit, you continuously surprise me, Miss MacKenna." They had swapped places with the others midway through the drive, with Spy now driving with Shiloh in the cab with him and Sniper and Scout resting in the back - it certainly had filled some of the silence.

Shiloh shrugged at his comment and continued to stare out the window as the scenery rolled by. "It's not that big a deal, really. I actually spent a few summers up in that area - I do sort of range all over the region, going wherever I feel like. The tourism at the lake during the summer and fall months is usually pretty decent, I normally made enough to keep me going for a year or more by selling little charcoal sketches."

"You are not one that is concerned with money then, I see."

She shook her head. "Nah...you'd be surprised how easy it is to survive without relying on it."

"Do tell."

"I basically use it only to replace my clothing and boots, keep the gear I use in working order, and buy things like vitamins and water purifying tablets. I'm pretty self-sufficient otherwise."

He snorted. "At least you do not lack in confidence...truthfully, you sound like our bushman."

"...bushman?"

Spy jerked his head toward the little window that opened into the back of the truck. "Our Sniper. Bushman is an Australian term, and to hear him speak one would think he does not know what the inside of a house even looks like."

She chuckled and stared out the window again. "It's not a bad way to live, you know. The freedom alone is an amazing thing."

"So are the finer things in life, such as fine liquor, good company, music, and a comfortable place to lay ones head at night."

"I had that once, it wasn't hard to walk away from it. And none of that sounds like something you would have the time for or the means to enjoy, given your line of work."

He made a sort of acknowledging hum in his throat and gave her a curious look but otherwise didn't reply, and they rode the rest of the trip in silence. On the western boundary of the lake, the furthest point from the lakeside resort, was a squat concrete building that looked like some sort of old well house connected to the crumbling wooden remains of a barn; Spy eased their truck into the barn and, as she hopped out of the passenger seat Shiloh could tell the derelict look was only superficial - the inside was reinforced and well-cared for...she supposed that made sense, since you wouldn't want random schmucks walking into your mercenary base and the ready-to-collapse look would be a good enough deterrent for most.

Spy roused the other two and the four of them walked to the heavily armored door that connected the two buildings, Spy punching in a code on a very dusty keypad set into the wall beside it; the door groaned open and the heavy smell of dust and dampness blew out toward them.

"I hope the lights still work," Scout snorted.

Spy smirked a bit. "We can make do with faulty lighting, what we should hope for is the phone being still functional."

\---------------------------------------------

The top level of the well house had been dusty and somewhat damp but the lower level was actually almost something one would describe as cozy - the walls were rough cut stone blocks but were sanded smooth and well lit by panel-style lights that were bolted to the walls at regular intervals, giving the space a sort of soft golden glow. The topmost level was, of course, the hallway connected to the barn; the second one down had what looked like the living quarters in it, with one room even opening into a balcony that looked down the side of a steep hill that eventually evened out to a flat area of packed dirt ringed with trees and dotted with deep, old tire tracks.

The third level seemed to be their storage space, not overly interesting since it was mostly empty, but Shiloh waited patiently by the door while the men took a quick inventory of what they did have.

"We at least can function with just the four of us for now," Spy said, dusting off his hands - a bit amusing when one considered that he was still wearing dirty, blood stained clothing. "Most certainly we will need a supply drop."

"Did we check that the phone here is still working?" Sniper asked, gesturing for Shiloh to follow him as he stepped by her and out of the room.

"No, not yet. That should be our next step, however."

They went back up to the living quarters floor; here, down one side of the hallway, there were small rooms with two to four bunks per room - small and cramped, but the bunks were covered with dustcloths and weren't moldy or moth-eaten. Shiloh did a quick count and found there were sixteen rooms here with a single communal bathroom area in the middle - this floor was by far the largest, and she wondered how they had plumbed the single bathroom and how it could have possibly served anywhere from thirty two to sixty four people, much less how much effort it had taken to excavate the space and put the masonry work in to create it.

The other side of the hallway had a mess hall area and the room that opened up to the balcony outside, plus what she assumed were storage rooms and office spaces. Everything was dusty but the electricity still worked and she leaned against the wall between two bunkroom doors to give Spy enough room to brush passed her to step inside one of the little offices. Soon his gloved hand was motioning for them to come inside, including Shiloh, and the four of them crowded in around an ancient-looking phone with a cobwebbed speaker.

Miss Pauling's voice was currently coming from that speaker, the others coming in mid-word as she spoke. "-u're where?"

"At the Dulcimer base," Spy said smoothly from where he was perched on the very edge of a plain wooden chair in front of the desk that the phone sat atop. "There was a...problem."

"What problem, Spy? What's happened?"

Spy rested his chin in a hand, his expression momentarily unreadable. "...when was the last time you spoke to the Blu team?"

"Spy, you know we do not discuss anything outside of your own t-"

"-answer, Miss Pauling. Humor me."

For a moment she didn't answer, a sound akin to a light wind coming through. "We lost contact with them-"

"-several months ago," Spy interrupted, only his eyes moving to look up at Sniper and Scout. "And I know this because I have spoken to Blu's spy." He paused and Miss Pauling didn't reply; after what felt like an uncomfortably long time, he began speaking again. "Has the Administrator informed you of anything regarding the disappearance of the Blu team?"

"...no, she hasn't. Not really, anyway - she only told me not to worry about it. You don't really question the woman."

Spy's gaze again lifted to Sniper and Scout, his next comment directed more at them than at the phone. "So, it is not a difficult leap of logic to make, to assume the Administrator may have known about the disappearances, about this man's role in it, and chose not to say anything until we acquired Miss MacKenna here - a sudden stroke of luck that we acquired tool to lure the man out."

"I'm coming to Dulcimer. No one leave - I'll arrange a supply drop while I'm on the way. Is everyone alive and with you?"

"Alive? The last we saw them yes, the team was alive, including Miss MacKenna. However, only myself, Miss MacKenna, Sniper, and Scout are here currently - the rest are assisting Engineer with a plan."

"Damn it...all right, lay low and try to get ahold of the others. Get them to Dulcimer ASAP, I'll be there as soon as I can."

Spy's smirk could just barely be seen behind his fingers. "There is something to be said for never questioning the Administrator, hmm?"

"Not now, Spy..."

There was a soft click as Pauling hung up; Spy silently stared ahead, expression neutral, before pushing himself to his feet. "I knew something was not adding up."

"Y'think the Administrator wanted Blu to take the guy out?" Scout asked, scratching his head. "I mean, didn't the other spy say they were hunted down? Maybe they weren't hunted at all but botched an attempt to kill the guy - I mean, he's kicked our butts once and his robots did it once, and then there was the sawmill-"

Spy waved a hand, silencing Scout. "Valid points, but I for one am not going to speculate until Pauling reaches us." There was another long bout of silence as the three mercenaries stared grimly at one another.

"Who is this Administrator, exactly?" Shiloh asked.

"Someone you do not want to mess with," came Scout's reply. "I mean, she is scary - she knows everything you ever did, she has intel on us like you wouldn't believe, and she is basically the freaking voice of God."

"She's our employer," Sniper interjected, giving Scout an exasperated look. "Though she's all of that as well - it's a pain dealing with her but the money's good, and if you keep to her damn rules she mostly leaves you alone."

"Mostly," Spy said, still smirking. "She regularly does her best to send us to our deaths for the most asinine reasons...but it does pay well."

Shiloh gave each of them a look. "...what is it exactly that you guys do?" Between the three of them they managed to give a timeline of the Mann family, the land war, and then the robot problem; when they'd finished she simply stared at them. "That is the dumbest damn thing I've ever heard...and you think my lifestyle is stupid," she added, looking at Spy.

"I never said that," Spy replied dryly. "I did perhaps imply, accidentally, that it is not the lifestyle I would choose."

"Mmhmm..." Her tone was just as dry as his. "Anyway...we're just going to sit around until Pauling gets here I'm guessing."

"Not like we've got anything else to do."

She turned to stare down the line of doors that led to bunks. "Then I'm going to lay down and hope these bunks are softer than a bench."

\---------------------------------------

After a short nap, Shiloh slipped quietly into the room that opened to the balcony and then moved outside and inhaled deeply; the sun had moved, bathing half of the balcony in sunlight with the other half in shadow cast from the hill and protruding building overhead, as well as from the concrete wall that formed the 'railing' of the balcony. She moved to sit with her back against the concrete in the right front corner of the balcony, mostly in the shade but able to stretch her legs into the sun.

The urge to go tearing off into the woods and get away from this craziness was incredible, almost overwhelming. She'd mostly come to terms with essentially being the prisoner of these mercs - even if it was for good a reason, a prisoner was still a prisoner - but even still there was a part of her screaming that if she'd just get out, get into the wilderness and hide, she'd be fine. No madman could find her if she didn't want to be found, not if she was out there. 

Arguing with that voice to run was a voice pointing out that it was somewhat nice to at least have human company around, something she didn't have unless she went into a town and something she hadn't consistently had since leaving Vegas. It was a weird thought, truth be told.

She looked up, her train of thought interrupted, as the door opened and Scout poked his head out.

"Oh, hey, you're out here. I was looking for you." He had something bright red held in one hand, which he tossed at her as he stepped outside. "Here, brought you something."

She caught it - it was a cloth object, and she held it up to see it was a shirt. "What's this for?"

"Something to wear so you can fix the shirt you've got on."

"Fix the shirt I've got..." she looked between the red shirt and him, expression confused.

Scout made a 'turn around' motion with a finger. "Yeah, the back of your shirt is all torn up, got a big hole in it. I saw it when you got out of the back to switch places with me and Sniper."

She draped the red shirt over her knees and twisted to the side, grabbing and tugging at her shirt to shift it around so she could see at least the bottom back half of it; Scout was correct - there was a hole in the back as well as a ragged tear around the hemline. "Huh... I didn't even notice - you'd think I would have at some point."

"Yeah, yeah, no need to thank me," he said, grinning hugely, which slowly took on an air of slight uncertainty. "So uh, while I've got you here-"

"Hold that thought and turn around," Shiloh interrupted, mimicking his gesture from earlier. She waited for him to put his back to her then quickly swapped shirts to get a better look at the hole in the back of hers. "All right, you can turn back around. I guess this happened when I was pulled through the window." The red shirt was a bit too short in the torso for her but covered everything that needed covering; her shirt didn't look so bad, the tears might be fixable and bloodstains on the back of the shirt didn't bother her.

"Uh huh, so yeah, listen...can I ask you something?" He turned around, hands fidgeting with a set of dog tags hanging around his neck.

"I don't see why not. This shirt yours?"

"Yeah, it is, hope it doesn't smell since it got left here so long. Anyway, ah...you...you're a girl."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "Brilliant observation."

He grit his teeth and pressed his hands together in front of him. "I...look, you're a girl, you know what girls would like. If you were me, how would you get a girl's attention?"

For a long - uncomfortably long, in fact - moment, she simply stared at him in silence. "...THAT'S what you wanted to ask me? Look, you already asked once if I had a boyfriend-"

He waved his hands in front of him, frantic. "Yeah yeah, no, I'm not interested in you - I mean, you're cute, and hey if you want to go for it I'm your man I won't turn it down even though that kind of makes me sound desperate but it's... All right, hang on." He took a few breaths. "All right, uh... Just, in general. A general answer, you know?"

She pulled one knee up toward her chest and propped an elbow on it, then rested her chin in that hand. "You're asking me how to get a woman to like you?"

"Yes, that, that exactly. I mean, I've had lots of run ins with girls but nothing ever sticks, you know? How do you get in good?"

"Scout, you do realize I spend something like 90% of my time alone, right? And when I lived in Vegas I could not have cared less about any of the men around me? I wouldn't know romance if it walked up and slapped me."

"Maybe, but you're female, you already have more inside information than I do."

"What's between my legs has no bearing on what I know about dealing with other people, Scout..."

Scout sighed and twisted fingers into the dog tag chain. "Look, just...if you were me, how would you do it?"

"Hell if I know, I don't know you now do I?"

"...please? You don't know me but you're not laughing at me either."

She let her head drop back, lightly banging it on the concrete wall behind her, and was silent for another long moment. "...just...try going about it like you would if you were trying to just be a friend, you know? Find common ground - what do you like that she likes, what interests do you share - and then find some interest in things that're different about you both. I love sitting in old diners and listening to the old men tell stories - being alike, as well as being different, can bring people together. And then after that I'd guess let her know how you feel, and just be a friend even if she's not interested in anything further. You just have to know how to treat people, Scout. It's part of being human."

"I kill people for a living and I've been stuck with these same chuckleheads for awhile now - you know how much outside exposure I get? Take you for example: you might as a well be a freaking unicorn - you're not part of this, all of this-" he gestured at the building behind him "-and you're not trying to kill me. And you're not from around here so you're not some mouth-breathing idiot. AND you're female. That is like, the perfect storm of things I don't normally see. I should go buy a lottery ticket right now this is so stupid unlikely."

She snorted at that, smiling. "I have to say no one has ever referred to me as a unicorn before."

"Is that good?"

"Not really."

He sighed, rubbing his hands down his face. "I'm not going to be killing people for the rest of my life - I mean, it's great money, it's fun, and it's one hell of a rush, but it ain't something you can do forever, you know? And I can't even hold a conversation like a normal freaking human being - I can't even string six words together when I'm trying to talk to her and if I'm not talking then conversation ain't happening and then she leaves."

"I think you're thinking about this way too hard. Sit down and take a breather."

He flopped down next to her and leaned back against the wall too, resting arms on his knees. "I gotta think about the future and that means finding a girl and trying to be normal. My ma would like that, me bringing a girl home someday - she raised nothing but boys and we gave her one hell of a time. I got a girl I like and I could totally see me and her in the future, and that'd make my ma happy. Find a girl, settle down, and then take care of my ma and show her she raised a respectable man, you know?"

"I guess. I wouldn't really know much about parental relationships, mine abandoned me - well, my step-dad did."

He gave her a confused look. "I thought you said you were raised in Las Vegas."

"I was, just not by my parents. When I was ten my step-dad just up and got rid of me, dumped me out in Vegas and drove off. I eventually ended up with-"

"-with that boxer guy, yeah? I remember you talking 'bout him."

She grinned and nodded. "Yeah, him. Mr. Alexei, the Russian Concussion - he was retired by the time he encountered me, and he was the best dad I can remember."

"So you said your step-dad got rid of you...what about your real dad?"

"Died when I was four."

"Ah..." He was actually silent for a moment. "So why'd this Alexei guy end up with you?"

She shrugged. "Hard telling... The church I was dumped at was an actual church, not a fake Vegas one, and they moved me to an orphanage. About two weeks after I got to there, Alexei came in and I was handed over to him. He took me to-" she blew out a sigh, eying Scout silently before continuing "-took me to a gentleman's club owned by a woman named Madam Zoya. And before you ask, no - there wasn't prostitution there, not a lot of gambling either. It was mostly a club for drinking, watching stage shows and live musical performances, and for lonely old men to pay to have a conversation partner for the evening. I did all the housework and errand running."

"Oh. Well that ain't nearly so exciting as I was expecting, you being just a housekeeper."

"...here's a tip for making female friends, Scout - don't imply you think she's a whore."

His eyes went wide. "Wait, what? Holy crap, I'm sorry, I didn't mean-"

"-I'm messing with you, Scout."

"...that ain't nice."

She started laughing at the offended look on his face. "But, hey, look at you - carrying on a conversation like a normal human being."

"Yeah, I guess I am. Guess this ain't that hard."

\------------------------------------------------

Up the hill, above the balcony and concealed behind a few scrub bushes, Sniper had his kukri and a whetstone resting in his lap and was currently biting a knuckle to keep himself from laughing. He'd always known Scout was a damn idiot but listening to him conversing with Shiloh below was almost more than he could stand.

Sniper did have to admit that Scout had a point - it had been awhile since any of them had had non-violent encounters with people outside of their little team. The people of the Badlands and the surrounding areas really did not like having their landmarks and region blown up on a weekly basis so their opinions of and reactions to the mercenaries had always been a bit...well, violent at the worst, and openly hostile at the best.

The conversation going on below just kept going, the topic wandering as Scout's mouth began to run at full speed; he again had to bite his knuckle to stop himself from laughing as he heard Shiloh finally explaining to Scout that part of dealing with people was knowing when to shut up and listen, and how listening would be half the battle of finding himself a girlfriend.

"-need to listen more than you talk, you'll learn a lot more that way."

"What? I thought we were just talking!"

"We were, then YOU started talking. Didn't you notice?"

'Of course he didn't,' Sniper thought to himself with a smirk. 'He's got the attention span of a brain-damaged fish.'

There was the sound of the door opening then, their voices pausing mid-sentence briefly.

Spy's voice carried up the hill easily even though he was addressing the others. "Ah, there you both are. It would seem the supply fairy has graced us with its presence - Scout, there is manual labor calling your name upstairs."

Sniper silently nodded to himself - he'd thought he'd heard an engine not too long ago and hadn't seen a vehicle from his vantage point, but if he'd heard it it probably meant whoever it was wasn't trying to be stealthy.

"Why do I have to carry stuff in?" came Scout's whine.

"You will not be alone," was Spy's response. "Oh, and by the way, Miss MacKenna - you have an eavesdropper."

...ah hell.

"A what?" she was saying, as Sniper ground his teeth together and clipped his kukri back to his belt. 

"I was not eavesdropping, I was out here first," he called down the hill, getting to his feet so he was visible. "And someone needs to keep an eye on her, I figured she'd come out here eventually."

He began to make his way back down the hill, the other three staring up at him. Shiloh gave him a look when he hopped down and landed with a grunt on the balcony.

"Could have said something instead of skulking."

"Excuse me? I was not skulking," he snorted. "Besides, like I said, I was out here first-" he held the whetstone up and shook it in her direction, "-putting an edge on my knife."

Spy smirked, leaning to the side in an exaggerated manner to look at Sniper's kukri. "Ah, yes - a completely unmarked whetstone and a blade that looks as though it has not been touched."

Sniper pressed his lips together and gave the man a scathing look, doing his best to ignore the obnoxious snorting laughter Scout was trying - and failing - to suppress. "Don't you two have something to do?"

"I suppose 'we two' do indeed. Come, Scout, it seems we have been dismissed."

"Hey, if he ain't carrying crap I ain't carrying crap."

"Scout. Now." Spy's tone dropped several octaves - Shiloh assumed it was some sort of known cue for the younger male since he immediately bit out a 'yessir' and almost fell over himself to get to the door.

With a sort of knowing, faint grin, Spy turned to follow him. "I will let you know what was delivered, yes?" 

Sniper glowered at the man's back until the door shut, then stuffed the whetstone into a pocket of his vest; Shiloh was looking at him from where she was still sitting on the ground, her chin in a hand and elbow propped on a raised knee.

"Why'd you climb up there anyhow?"

"Vantage point," he grunted, crossing his arms after a moment. "I prefer being somewhere I can see from."

"Were you up there the entire time? The entire time I've been out here, I mean." He nodded and she inhaled and exhaled slowly. "You could have just come down, I wouldn't have cared and maybe Scout wouldn't have flapped his face so much."

He snorted and took a few steps over to lean against the concrete; the short wall came up to his waist, a comfortable height to rest his hands on as he leaned. "Nah, Scout will talk so long as there's someone around to listen, and sometimes he'll talk even if there isn't anyone. Think he just likes hearing his own voice sometimes."

She shrugged. "Maybe he's just lonely, I can sympathize with that."

Sniper was quiet a moment before turning his head to stare out into the trees down the hill below them. "Heard quite a bit up there - still find it hard to wrap my head around the fact you just took off into the wilds."

"Why? I could do the same thing right now - give me a knife and I'd be just fine, could disappear just like that," she chuckled, snapping her fingers at the word 'that.'

"Just not something I think of when I look at you."

She raised an eyebrow at that. "Yeah? And just what do you think of instead?"

He shrugged. "Not a damn clue, but it's not that." Down below a small flight of birds lifted from the trees; he followed their flight with his eyes for a moment before continuing. "You think a knife is all you'd need, then?" A small smile tugged at his lips.

"What, you don't believe that either?"

"Not in the slightest."

Now it was her turn to snort and cross her arms. "How would you know? What do you even have to base that particular conclusion on? You've never seen me out there in that environment. Get me out into the trees and I'd be gone."

"Not so gone that I couldn't find you."

"Oh really? Willing to put your money where your mouth is?"

He paused, then looked over at her; her expression was part annoyed, part challenging. "What? You think you can outdo me? You've never seen me out there either, and I'm Australian - bloody big difference between our skill levels, if you ask me."

"This isn't Australia, Mundy, and I know these mountain stretches fairly well. I'm willing to bet if I really wanted to, I'd be good and gone and there wouldn't be a thing you could do about it."

He let out a huff of disbelief. "Not bloody likely."

She pushed herself to her feet, tossing her torn shirt onto the concrete wall and taking a few steps toward him, one finger jabbing in the air at him. "All right then, prove it - when this guy is gone and not after me, let's just see who's right."

"Got one hell of a mouth on you, sheila," he said with a sort of wry grin. "You sure you want to challenge me?"

"If you think you're so much better than me then show it, don't tell it."

With a bark of laughter he thrust a hand toward her. "You have no damn idea what you just got yourself into. You're on."

With a grin to match his, she shook his hand. "Ditto, bushman."

"...who the hell-"

"Who do you think?"

Sniper sent another glare at the door. "God damn spook...has he said anything else?"

"Not particularly." She retrieved her shirt and moved toward the door.

"And where are you going?" he called after her.

She paused, hand on the doorknob. "Inside, to help those two - might as well make myself useful, might see if there happens to be a needle and thread among whatever else was left for us."

He nodded, then straightened as a thought occurred to him. "...yeah, actually, I think I'll come with you. I'm curious to see if something else was included in our little drop."

"Yeah? And what would that be?" She tugged the door open and held it open behind her until he'd reached it and got his own hand on it, stepping in behind her.

"If what I'm hoping is there is actually there, you and I are going to go for a walk."

She gave him an incredulous look. "I said after this guy was gone, not-"

"Nah, it's not that, c'mon - let's go have a look."


	17. Ch 17 - New Skills and Failures

His fingers felt numb but they had stopped weeping fluid; the numbness would fade as the transplanted materials set and his body accepted them, but the lack of feeling was as unsettling now as it had always been. There was at least the comforting burning, tingling feeling of current running through the wires within his arms - those were still functioning and had not yet been rejected by his body, and if they hadn't been rejected at this point he now believed they never would be. That meant he really could seriously consider incorporating the gauntlet and ring permanently and begin planning how to embed the rest of the wires within the metal casing around his abdomen.

When the Medicbots allowed it he sat up, flexing his unfeeling hands and feeling the metal casing flexing at the joints as he moved. Flagship was nowhere to be seen and neither was the trunk that had held the materials now incorporated into him; his feet dropped to the floor and he stood, looking around for the robot.

"Bring me clothing, and my tools," he ordered, the Medicbots moving to obey. They brought out another set of the heavy pants, shirt, and jacket he preferred, one bot standing at the ready with the gauntlet and ring held toward him. He dressed and slipped the ring onto his left hand and the gauntlet onto his right, lightly rubbing the glass gemstone that covered the circuitry within it.

'This was once sister's,' he thought to himself, a memory of the gaudy ring on her hand coming to mind unbidden. He twitched some - it was always hard to control where his mind went after a treatment, in both ignoring idle thoughts and then ignoring memories once they came to the forefront. With the thought of 'sister' came the memory of a flash of light and a burning sensation around his face and neck; instinctively he clapped his hands to his face, gasping sharply.

"Where did she go?" he hissed out.

The Medicbots seemed to confer among themselves before one went "Location: unknown. Absent from current room approximately twenty three point nine minutes."

He nodded absently, slowly dragging his nails down his cheeks - both the skin of his face and his fingernails were abnormally soft so the action only left faint red marks - and stumbled from the room, heading unsteadily toward what he called The Nexus.

The Nexus was a room that no one but he and Flagship were permitted in, a central point to this complex that was directly beneath the room that held his nine captured test subjects. All information gathered from the machines, and from everything he controlled, funneled into The Nexus where he could comfortably sort through it and compile it into a wonderful scholarly collective of knowledge.

He twitched and shuddered...yes, such wonderful information...

The door took several minutes to unseal itself, the locks and fail-safes ponderously deactivating before he could step through and lock it back up behind himself; the room beyond it was a crowded mess of computer panels, monitors, printers with piles of readouts clustered around their bases, his own small bed, and...

Flagship, hooked to the charging station, for all appearances standing guard over his empty bed.

"Sister."

The robot shuddered, the eyes lighting up with the robot remaining otherwise stationary and unmoving. "Brother." Her voice had lost its lilt and was deeper, more electronic and distorted. "Are you fixed?"

"I am. Soon I will return to my work-"

"-they know your face brother." Flagship's eyes flickered briefly through an array of colors. "You must destroy them before they destroy you. You are better than this."

"I know, sister, I know. The flesh of this damaged body is weak, however. I envy yours some days."

The eyes flickered again, going from green to orange before darkening to red. "This metal shell is my bane. A mark of your shame. You are a god among men brother. This is unacceptable."

"I remembered the accident, I think."

"As well you should. You failed me in the worst way and now look at me."

"I see a perfection in you that is not obtainable by skin and bone."

"Perfection is the goal you strive for and yet you fail at this as well. The woman still lives. The spy evaded you for weeks. Your body is rotting away and your mechanical replacements are pathetic."

He moved stiffly over to slide onto his bed, laying flat on his back. "Do you desire your ring back? I remember how you loved it."

"I desire no trinkets. I wish to think and feel again. I wish to forget that you destroyed me. Can you build me that, brother?"

"There is nothing beyond my reach."

"Then it is my suggestion you act on the brilliance you possess."

The light faded from the bot's eyes as it went silent; from where he lay he regarded her silently as the burning sensation and phantom pains began to assault him. He did indeed envy her and her circuit-laced brain - it was as easy as removing or overwriting memories for her to forget. For him it was a child's game akin to using a fork to find a live wall outlet - innocently poking at things until there is a shock and a jolting pain that remained with you for hours.

-lights and sounds and buttons sister look I have found the final key needed-

Now twitching uncontrollably he curled up on his side to wait. As soon as feeling returned to his hands, he was going to definitively finish this.

\-----------------------------------

"Perfect, exactly what I was hoping for." Sniper grinned widely and let the crowbar he was using to pry open a crate drop to the ground at his feet; in one of the larger crates, the last one left for the three of them to open, there was a cache of weapons. He had been expecting to find as much as they slowly progressed through opening what had been left for them - there were foodstuffs in the first, clothing and medical supplies in the next two, and in the three after that had been nothing but ammunition galore - to Sniper, that meant that the last and largest crate had to be what the ammunition was for.

And he was correct; as Scout helped him move the wooden lid off to the side, Spy moved up to give the crate's contents a quick look over. "Well, it would seem all things are in order here," the Frenchman smiled a bit as he reached in to carefully lift a sapper from the crate. There seemed to be at least one of each of their favored weapons in here, all of them bearing that delightfully new sheen of untouched perfection.

Sniper came back over and shifted a grenade launcher and spare minigun parts out of the way until he lifted a sleek black rifle from the pile. "Perfect. And now, let's you and I get going," he said, turning to fix Shiloh with a look.

She was again leaning against the doorway, arms crossed and watching them work after having helped them carry the crates inside. "...get going? Get going where?"

"Yes, where indeed, Sniper?" Spy asked, looking up from where he was examining a new revolver. "Or have you forgotten that Shiloh is to remain out of sight to the best of her abilities?"

"We're going out - she lost that little toy gun you gave her and it hardly put a dent in those newer robots anyway. This-" and he held up the rifle, "-will blow their tin heads across the county. She's going to learn to shoot it and I'm going to show her how."

She actually looked intrigued. "Sounds logical to me I guess, providing I see them coming at me. That doesn't look like it'd be useful if something is right on top of me."

He stepped his way around the crates and came toward her, pausing only to snag a box of bullets and his own rifle. "It's awkward at close range but not impossible to use, but that's not the point - this is a tool to keep them from reaching you in the first place."

She raised an eyebrow at that. "And, what about the invisible ones?"

"I'll show you how to deal with those too, now come on."

Falling in behind him she silently followed him back to the balcony, where he showed her a place to hop the wall and climb down a little footpath down the hill that eventually led them to that hard-packed dirt area; there were tire tracks here and there, crumbling and old but still visible and deep enough that one would likely break an ankle if they stepped wrong into them. Shiloh at first thought they would stop somewhere around here but Sniper led her further down the hill, sticking to the edge of an almost overgrown dirt road that weaved between the trees.

As they walked occasional open areas - overgrown with grass and struggling bushes but still clear of trees - appeared on either side of the road, the dirt that was visible among the patches of grass bearing a darker tint than the road they were on. She assumed these had been loading areas for the coal mines and tried to imagine that - trucks and wagons, loaded down with black rock and moving up and down the wooded area on this road...as narrow as this road was she guessed that this mine probably hadn't been very active until the silver had been found.

Sniper eventually veered off the road and into one of the open areas; it was ringed with trees and had a line of mossy rocks thrusting out of the ground that ran parallel to this section of the road. He stopped near the line of rocks and turned to face her, offering the new rifle to her once she was close enough to take it.

"Basics first," he said, then launched into a technical explanation of the rifle - what the parts were called, what their functions were, how they worked and moved together. Shiloh's attention was fully on him and on the rifle as he spoke, occasionally commenting quietly or asking a question for clarification; when he was done talking he had her repeat it all back to him, a look of approval flickering across his features when he didn't need to correct her on anything as he loaded a single round into the gun. "Quick learner."

"Absorbing new skills quickly is sort of vital to my chosen lifestyle...that's another thing Alexei imparted to me."

"Seems your Alexei fellow had his head in the right place. Now-" he stepped behind her, his right hand moving to guide her right hand to the trigger guard, his left guiding her left to cup the forestock; he paused when he felt her stiffen and suck in a breath. "-something wrong?"

"I was not aware I'd be wearing you like a backpack for this."

"I'm not going to do anything to you," he snorted. "Now, hold it like this - tightly here, but keep your trigger hand relaxed - and then you keep the butt of the stock pressed to here-" and he guided the back end of the stock to press it in against her shoulder. "Keep this against you when you fire, there's going to be kickback - it won't be bad, but your first few shots might surprise you in terms of how hard this will kick and where the muzzle of the rifle will end up compared to where it was before you pulled the trigger. Your hands and the contact here-" and he lightly bumped the butt-plate into her shoulder "-are what keeps your aim steady when you're not resting against something. You'll probably be a little shaky until your muscles get used to this." He used his toes to lightly nudge her into a wider stance then. "Always try to be standing somewhere stable too."

He let go of her right hand to reach forward - which brought him into even closer contact with her, and he could tell she was still standing rigidly - to click the laser sight on that was beneath the scope, then he popped the scope cap off. "All right, the scope - it can be adjusted back or forward to give you a bit of comfort when you're staring down it so you're not killing your neck, we'll adjust this one for you when we've got you comfortable firing this thing. Have a look through it."

She bent her neck forward and put her right eye to the scope's opening, closing her left. "I think it might be fine where it is, actually." After a moment she opened her left eye. "Oh, huh...I'm guessing you're really used to not needing both eyes to figure out what you're looking at, kind of hard to see that laser point without the scope and it's weird looking at things through the scope."

He chuckled, almost into her ear. "You'd be right, but you'll get used to it. I remember when Dad bought me my first rifle - it shot BBs, even had a tiny scope on it. I had to use both eyes to sight in on what I was looking at, if it was far enough away. Use your left to get a general idea of where you're pointing the muzzle at, and use your right to put those cross hairs exactly where they need to be. You'll get used to it eventually and not need to use both."

Turning her head she almost bumped noses with him and jerked away before hurrying to face forward again, whatever she'd been about to say lost. "...n-now what?"

"Now you're going to fire. I'll brace you from behind for this first shot. Hand on the trigger..." He covered her hands with his own again, putting his chin almost on her shoulder. "See that tree across the road with the knothole facing us?"

"Yeah, is that my target?"

"That's your target. Use your scope to sight in and put those cross hairs on it." After a few moments of her staring into the scope he felt her hand tense under his, the finger tightening. "Fire when you're sure you've got it."

A few breaths passed, then he felt her suck in a breath an instant before there was the jerk and the bang of the rifle firing. To her credit all she did was grunt at the kickback, though he'd felt her pull a bit and knew her shot would be off.

"See? Not so bad, let's see how you did-" Again he put his chin almost on her shoulder, Shiloh tilting her head out of his way to give him a mostly clear line of view down the scope. It only took a few moments for him to aim everything back at the tree, and even though his vision was blurry at this distance from the scope he could see that she'd at least managed to hit the tree, just not the knothole like he'd wanted. "Not bad for your first shot, looks like you pulled a bit."

"Little nervous, yeah."

"Nervous? No need for that. All right, now, reloading..." He grabbed her right hand to guide it up from the trigger and to the bolt handle. "Grab and move this-" he moved her hand through the motion, "-and the case comes out. Some rifles are able to hold more than one round at a time - mine holds a handful, so does this one - so at this point if you had more than one round in there, a new round would be loaded in for you. I only put one into yours to start with. There's a small spring-catch just inside here, watch your fingers-" He pulled a round free from a pocket in his vest and pressed it into her hand. "Use your thumb, slide it in until you feel it catch, then you push the bolt back into position and you're good to fire again."

Her fingers were clumsy compared to his, and he heard the sharp intake of breath as well as felt her jerk. "Ow...well, found the catch," she muttered, using her pointer finger to massage the reddening tip of her thumb. "Did I stick my thumb too far in or...?"

"Nah," he chuckled, moving his thumb into view - there was a dark purple-black splotch, ever-present, under the thumbnail. "I've jabbed my thumb in there more times than I can count, I still do it even though I've been shooting the greater part of my life...plus, you just don't care about sticking yourself when the alternate is getting shot because you were too slow."

She eyed his thumb with a sort of grin. "I can see how a bloodied thumb is better than some new holes, yes."

He had her fire and reload a few times more with him still essentially attached to her back, then finally stepped back to let her try it without any assistance from him. Her accuracy immediately took a dive but it wasn't terrible - she was at least still hitting the tree she was aiming at, but he could easily see the muzzle tracing tiny circles in the air as she tried to hold it steady.

"...I feel really damn clumsy with this," she said after a few more shots. 

"What have you shot before? Anything other than a pistol?"

"Pistols, revolvers, and I have a compact crossbow. It's...kind of similar to this, but not really?" She went silent as she focused on reloading and aiming. 

Sniper moved closer to the mossy rocks, lowering himself to sit in the soft grass in front of them. "What's the biggest thing you've taken down with the crossbow?"

"Probably a coyote. I was actually kind of mad I had to kill it - normally I didn't have any issues scaring the things off, and this one was a loner, but I guess it was hungry enough to not be skittish? I know it didn't act sick and didn't look sick when I got a look at its corpse...doesn't mean it wasn't sick, but it was still an oddball of a situation at the time. Was messy getting that bolt back, too." She paused and fired, then moved the rifle to under her left arm and rotated her right shoulder. "The crossbow I've got is a small model, and can actually be broken down to make carrying and storing it easier. It's not meant for something big, and I wouldn't need something big anyway - I only bought it so I'd have a means to add meat to my diet when I was between towns, same reason I bought a collapsible fishing rod too."

She retrieved the box of bullets from where he'd left it sitting near her feet, then came over to drop into the grass beside him, carefully leaning the rifle next to his against the rocks behind them. "Do you hunt much?"

"Besides men? I did some hunting back home in Australia. Most of the fun of hunting for me is tracking, and getting to that point where you know you're one shot away from bagging your target."

"What made you decide to be a mercenary?"

He shrugged as an answer; they sat in silence for a bit, Shiloh stretching out on her back in the grass.

"...what's Australia like?"

He looked over in time to see her trying to tug her too-short borrowed shirt down enough to cover her stomach. "Ah- Australia...not too much different from here, just harder...rougher, more deadly."

"I'd heard Australia was leading the world in technological advances...whatever those might be. No one ever seemed to have an answer on what 'advances' there were."

He snorted, waving a hand. "Yeah, yeah...Australians are a smart lot, but I didn't give a damn about that sort of thing. I prefer being outdoors, baking under the sun, doing and building with my hands, sweating..."

Shiloh went to put her arms behind her head and her shirt slid up again. "God damn it...Scout, why do you have to have such a short torso," she growled, dragging the shirt's hem back down again. She finally appeared to give up and sat up in defeat - at least sitting upright she wasn't showing skin.

He snorted and started laughing. "He's lacking in a lot of other things too, like a brain-to-mouth filter and an off button."

"Hmm, he does talk a lot...seems like a nice enough guy, though. Really, all of you do, the whole 'killing people for a living' aside."

"Do what?"

"Seem like nice guys. Might just be the Stockholm syndrome talking, but...well, I guess it hasn't been that bad, being stuck with you all. Though I still don't know what to make of Soldier."

Sniper again waved a hand dismissively. "Wouldn't worry about him, sheila - he's awkward around anyone he doesn't know, and the awkwardness tends to make things even worse. Sit him down, put a beer in his hand, and ask him about his medals - that'll get him talking, if you're really that intent on befriending him."

She chuckled quietly at that. "Or throw a deck of cards at him, he seems to like poker."

"We all do, just don't play it too often - Engineer tends to wipe the table with us every time he joins in."

She raised an eyebrow at that, pulling her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. "You don't say..." With a thoughtful look she turned her head to scratch her nose on her shoulder, then froze. "...oh boy."

"What?"

"I smell like you."

He slowly exhaled, closing his eyes, the unspoken implication coming to him. "...great. How do you feel like rolling around in the grass until you smell like it instead?"

"Anything that will not place ammunition in the hands of Scout and Spy is a fine idea."


	18. Ch 18 - Life's Work

In one of the unused bunk rooms Shiloh had found an old sewing kit and was currently stretched out on the bunk she'd decided to sleep on, repairing the tears in her shirt and listening as voices faded outside her door as their owners walked by. Under her head was the pathetically flat pillow she'd found in the bunk - she was debating snagging the other pillow off the other bunk across from her - and currently she was shirtless, Scout's borrowed shirt draped over the pillow as a makeshift case, more to mask the musty scent with that of grass and dirt than because the pillow actually needed one. 

She was glad no one had insisted someone be in the room with her so she actually had the freedom to lay here partially unclothed as she was, and after a moment she caught herself staring at the doorway as Scout's voice floated on by.

...she did have to admit to herself that the best part of this entire situation was the random chitchat from the men. They were just so...different, from the people she met in her travels - those were regular joes, going about regular lives, with regular stories and it was an incredible difference from the mercs's stories of far-off places and crazy gunfights. How many people got to hear that sort of thing outside of cheap novels and movies?

Granted, not all of them really talked to her; Scout and Sniper certainly did, Dell did when he was around, Spy did here and there but kept to inane small talk unless he was alone in the room with her - it always gave her the distinct impression he was wanting something from her, but she wasn't certain what. The others were less talkative, with Heavy having barely said three words to her this entire time, Medic avoiding speaking to her unless he had to, Tavish didn't seem to have a lot to say to anyone, Pyro was impossible to understand, and Soldier was...well, he was Soldier, but at least Sniper had clued her in on how to speak to him.

Speaking of the others, she wondered how long it would be before they returned, and on that note, she hoped they'd all return in one piece. While she considered herself a fairly intelligent person, able to grasp the basic idea of what 'compromised' might mean, she didn't have a frame of context for what a compromised mercenary base actually meant in terms of danger levels. Maybe in the morning she'd ask Spy to clarify, because if the others had willingly walked back into a base full of robots she might have to question their sanity a bit more, plus...well, she'd just feel a bit bad if any of them came back injured.

She tied a knot in the thread and used her teeth to clip it, then turned her shirt right-side out and examined her stitching, judging it 'good enough' and sticking the needle and thread back into the little canvas bag she'd found stashed under a bunk; after a few experimental tugs on the hemline to smooth it out she pulled her shirt back on and stood in the middle of the little room, eying the pillow on the empty bunk across from her.

It was almost a ridiculous thing to lay there and debate her level of comfort being as she was used to the hard ground and a thin blanket, with no pillow but her own arm, but the allure of being comfortable was slowly winning out over the voice of stubborn pride in her head insisting she didn't need it.

In the end she found herself moving to snag that second pillow, holding it in front of her with a sort of smirk on her face.

"Don't get used to it," she muttered into the silence, "when this is over you're going to be back out in the woods putting all of this behin-"

Abruptly she paused, fingers tightening on the pillow. She'd been about to say 'putting all of this behind her' but her conversation with Sniper from earlier sprang to mind, where she'd let her mouth run away with her pride.

Oh boy, that stupid bet... Would there be a graceful way to back out of that while saving face?

With an exasperated growl Shiloh buried her face into the musty pillow. "Goddamn stupid pride..."

\---------------------------------------

It was a long five days until Engineer and the others finally arrived at Dulcimer. The three other mercs and Shiloh spent those five days trying not to die of boredom - Sniper took Shiloh out frequently to practice with the rifle, Shiloh was trying to teach Scout the finer points of socialization skills as well as the ins and outs of blackjack, and Spy was doing his best to avoid talking to any of them, preferring to sit moodily in the corner of the mess hall and smoke silently.

The morning of the fifth day found Shiloh up earlier than Sniper for once so she was alone when she first heard the thumps and bumps coming from the floor above. She'd actually had her hand on the rifle leaning against the table next to her when she heard doors opening down the hall and the sounds of Scout and Sniper stomping off to go investigate. When they returned they had Demoman, Heavy, Soldier, and Pyro in tow and were loudly attempting to talk over one another.

The sudden bit of chaos of their arrival allowed Shiloh to slowly, without being noticed, lean the rifle back against the table before she folded her hands in her lap and waited for the conversation to sort itself out.

When a pause in the noise came she cleared her throat, "where's Dell?"

"He is upstairs with Medic and they are unloading our ill-gotten goods," Soldier replied, stomping over to drop into the chair directly in front of her. 

He didn't look injured, just rumpled and dirty, and she could smell sweat from where she sat. "Anything fun happen?"

He wrinkled his nose, the others moving about to get a meal going. "Pfft, no. All we found were Engineerbots. Engineerbots are not a threat unless you fear being bored to death. We should have taken you with us, you attract robots like a magnet."

She smiled a bit at that. "Maybe next time, Soldier." 

His eyes immediately lit up. "Really? I am holding you to that."

Her response to him was cut off as Sniper walked over and slid a cup of coffee onto the table in front of her. "...you know, you're going to get me hooked on this stuff and then I won't have it when I get out of your hair and back to the woods."

"You won't get hooked on this garbage, it's powdered instant," came the Australian's soured reply. "Can't even get a bloody proper cup of coffee..."

Soldier wrinkled his nose at that. "Is it too early for a beer? I think I would like a beer."

Shiloh slipped a few fingers through the cup's handle, tugging it closer. "I don't think I saw beer among the supply drop stuff."

"Then I guess it's terrible coffee for me then." Soldier stood up and moved away, leaving Shiloh to look up at Sniper.

"Awkwardness, right?"

He nodded silently, taking a sip and grimacing at the taste.

Scout eventually slipped from the room to head upstairs, and one by one after they ate the other mercenaries moved off to collapse in a bunk, leaving Shiloh and Sniper both nursing cups of coffee alone in the mess hall.

After a moment or two Sniper finally plunked his half-full mug down. "Nope, no, this ain't drinkable."

"Eh, look on the bright side."

"And that is?"

"Now you'll never wonder what paint thinner tastes like."

He snorted, then shook his head with a smile, which she returned before setting her own cup down and standing to slip the strap of her rifle over a shoulder. "And where are you going?"

"Up to talk to Dell, I want to see if he can get this thing off my arm," she answered, shaking her wrist and the attached cloaking device at him. "It's too tight and I itch like crazy under it."

"And it doesn't even work."

"That too, but mainly the itching is driving me insane."

She found Engineer, Scout, and Medic up the barn, Scout helping unload mechanical...things...from the back of the truck they'd arrived in with Engineer and Medic bustling around to set up a sort of temporary workshop; she slid her rifle from her shoulder and moved to help Scout lift a heavy, cumbersome engine-looking thing.

"Seems your trip wasn't wasted," she grunted as she and Scout lifted.

Engineer paused, turning to look at her. "Oh, didn't notice you come up. Yeah, you could say that - got shot at a bit, got a lot of junk, remains to be seen if I'm going to get anything useful out of it. Oh, and by the way Shiloh...this look familiar?"

She and Scout eased the engine down to the floor where Medic was indicating, then she stood and managed to catch the small object Engineer threw at her, turning it over in her hands as Scout peered over her shoulder. It was a-

"-yeah, this looks like that connector that was in that electrical box," she said, holding it between thumb and pointer. 

"I wish I'd gone to check it myself, I really should have. That one there isn't the only one we found, and that's not even the one you said was up there. Here we were wondering why that man seemed to know we were coming for him in that ambush. That right there is why." He made an unscrewing motion with his hands, and Shiloh carefully grasped the connector and twisted; it came apart in two pieces. "See those little bits in there? These things are full of transmitters and microphones - damn fool was spying on us."

"Spying? Seriously? That's freaking lame," Scout snorted, reaching to dump the tiny components into Shiloh's palm so he could poke at them. "So how many of these things were there?"

As a response Engineer came over to the truck and picked up a canvas sack off the top of a crate filled with what looked like disassembled screens; in one motion he turned and slung the bag to the floor, the open top spilling a sizable pile of fake connectors across the floor. "That many."

"Holy crap. I mean, just...holy crap, where did these come from?"

"If Spy's right and our bases were compromised when Blu got their asses captured, these could have been there for weeks. Hard telling which ones were still functioning too - some were burnt out when I pried them loose, and some of them we pried from the hands of those Engineerbots...damn things were actually dismantling our base when we got there. We grabbed what we could then I took that tank apart."

"Man, they were listening in on us... No damn wonder we were getting our asses kicked more often," Scout growled, grinding one of the connectors under a heel. "Why were they taking our crap apart though?"

"No idea unless they just wanted it for scrap. Pisses you right off though, doesn't it?" Engineer sighed, taking his hat off to rub a hand over his head. "Would have been here sooner if not for the damn robots and having to deal with them first - didn't take me long to tear that tank apart and take the important bits, now we just have to see what we can figure out from them."

Scout raised a finger, mouth opening and closing a few times, before he stuck his head inside the truck to peer at the rest of the stuff there. "So, wait a minute. They can't track us or listen to us through any of this, right?"

"Right now? Nope - nothing has a power source in there. But you can be damn sure I'll be checking everything before I power it up."

"Ah, speaking of powering up," Shiloh interrupted, "have a look at this-" She held up her left arm, the clamped cloaker device visible.

Engineer peered at it, then whistled. "And just what is that little number?"

"Javier stuck it on me when we were escaping - he said it was some sort of prototype cloaking device that the robots are using. I can't get it off my arm and it doesn't work."

He gestured at her to come closer and she did so, extending her arm to him so he could get a good look at it. "Prototype cloaker?" He exchanged a look with Medic, then scratched the back of his head. "A cloaking device...huh. Don't get to play with many of those." 

She nodded, waiting for him to let go before letting her arm drop back to her side. "I at least hope you can loosen the thing, it's tight..."

"Well, I hope I can too, since I can barely even tell there's a hinge to this thing. Give me a little bit to get something set up here, then I'll have a look."

With another nod she headed back toward the door, retrieved the rifle, and was slipping it back onto her shoulder when she heard a "wait a minute, who's Javier?" behind her. With a grin and a chuckle, she went back down the stairs and made it halfway down before running into Soldier.

"The coffee was terrible and I am bored. Everyone else is resting or busy - will you play poker?"

Shiloh blinked down at him in surprise. "Uh - ...well, sure, I guess."

"Good. Where did you get the rifle?"

"Sniper - he's teaching me how to use it and said I should have it with me at all times."

"That thing will not help you if something is on top of you."

"You know? I said the same thing actually."

"You are starting to think like a woman of war."

She chuckled and took the steps two at a time until she was down on the landing and following him back to the mess hall. "First you called me bad luck, now I'm a woman of war."

"I like a good fight and you attract robots - my opinion of you has changed. Plus anyone who can take a beating and still carry a man through a war zone gets top marks in my book."

"...you have a very strange outlook on life."

"Not the first time I've been told that. You deal first."

\----------------------------------------------

He watched silently as Engineerbots maneuvered the massive glass front plate of the machine's central chamber into place, his arms clasped behind his back and his expression surprisingly calm despite how quickly his mind was racing.

Once the information had been gathered, compiled, organized, and mentally digested, the correct calibrations and measurements had been simple to calculate. Once the calculations had been completed, the components were quickly manufactured. Once the components had been manufactured...well, the machine could finally be assembled.

"Is this is then, brother?" 

He didn't turn his attention from the bots down below, Flagship plodding up to stand beside him. "It is, sister. It is assembled, ready...it will require effort in acquiring proper raw materials and specimens, but I possess enough to make a beginning here." Very gently he touched fingertips to the glass dome that made up the top of his skull. "Soon this will be gone, replaced with proper bone. Those parts of me that I lost will be replaced, and I can focus on rebuilding you as well."

Flagship tittered. "Oh brother, so concerned with me. Are you certain it will work?" The robot's eyes quickly flickered through a spectrum of colors, briefly resting on red before blinking back to a pale blue.

"It will work, so long as there are materials to re-purpose."

Flagship tilted its head, the purple shawl's hood slipping free to reveal the robot's triangular head and the heat vents down the back of its neck. "Do you have enough then? You cast aside so many I was wondering if you were simply killing for sport."

"Only specimens in peak condition will suffice, sister - anything less than perfectly healthy will risk the end product. You do not want a faulty set of lungs, do you? Or perhaps a weakened heart?"

They both fell silent, watching the Engineerbots bolting the glass into place and testing connections elsewhere on the massive machine. The machine itself almost filled the room, lined with computer banks down one side and with a temperature-controlled containment unit on the other; through the cloudy glass front of the containment unit one could see rows of metal trunks - fifteen across and stacked twelve high - of specimen collections. There was a central chamber to the machine that was then further divided into two sections - the right side had sensors and scanning equipment and the left was tightly sealed and sanitized and was stark white and bare with only a drain in the gently-dipped floor.

There would be nothing in that sealed chamber for now, not until the neural mesh now wrapped around his brain had set and synchronized with the machine's computer and he had stepped into the scanning section. 

He let his fingers wander then, down from his glass-encased brain to the metal casing wrapped around his torso and ribs, to gently stroking down his arms where he could feel the tingle of the wires within them. A whole body again...a healthy, whole body, one that wasn't slowly rotting or damaged, one that he could safely experiment on rather than rush to simply keep himself alive. 

He could redesign the metal casing to implement a better heat venting system and increase room, perhaps put a more powerful teleportation device inside. The wires within his arms would need replacing to handle the increased load if he wanted to permanently attach his gauntlet and ring - the electrical current was only strong enough to keep his muscles functioning, he would need a far more powerful conduit for the other items. And now he would have the time to devote to developing a lighter alloy for internal structural-

"-brother!"

Blinking slowly he came out of his reverie. "Yes?"

"I asked what is next."

He was silent a long moment, sorting his words out. "...first, before the machine can be used, the power source must be stabilized. At current I am forced to use a combination of hydroelectric, battery banks, and what can be drawn from the grid. It is not ideal, but to push further without preparation will do only harm. The energy cost can be offset by charging the banks for now, but a more permanent solution will be required."

"And of Mr. Mann?"

The faintest of smiles crossed his face. "If he does not offer solutions I will take what measures I must to prevent his interference. I will not have my life's work undone by his impatience and incompetence...he will have his machine, but I will not let him ruin it."

Still smiling he turned and began to walk back toward the stairs that would take him down to his quarters. "Sister, I do wonder...would you do something for me?"

"Of course, dearest. Not that I could refuse you anyway."

"I want for you to search for the woman...and the men with her. She has eluded me far too long, and the men with her have mocked me long enough."

Flagship lifted the hood back up, humming. "Very well. Are the Elites ready?"

"Of course. I will activate them after I rest, I am quite exhausted."

"Then I will strive to have a woman waiting on you when you awaken. Do you want tokens of the men?"

"Whatever bits you would want to keep, sister."

The robot's eyes flicked to red briefly. "Yes, brother. Off I trot, then."

\-----------------------------------------------

"-you did what?"

"I said, I jumped on his head and beat his teeth out of his skull with my shovel. Two, please." Soldier pitched two cards into the pile in the middle of the table and Shiloh slid him two new ones. "I do not care for men who put blades in your back. Or your face. Or your shoulder. I did not get to finish the job because I was promptly given a bullet donation by his teammates."

She chuckled and threw a single card away, then dealt herself a new one. "I feel sort of awkward now, knowing you've beat the tar out of Javier..."

"Why are you calling him that?"

Shiloh picked up a stack of four chips and pushed them forward. "Well, I understand you guys don't use names normally - though, I do like having something to call you all-"

"-Jane Doe-"

"-becau- ...wait, your name is Jane?"

"Is that a problem?"

"No, I've just not known any men that go by Jane. I've met a few Jodies and a Lyndsey though. Anyway, Spy said Javier is likely not his actual name, but since there's the Spy we know and then the Spy on Blu, I'd kind of like having a name to use so no one confuses who I'm talking about."

"Hmm." Soldier fell silent, studying the cards he held and then staring over them to eye the chips Shiloh had pushed into the pot. "...no, I fold, this hand is not enough to risk it."

"Good to know my poker face is still passable then," Shiloh said, grinning as she tossed down an absolutely terrible hand of five random cards.

Soldier pressed his lips together, jaw visibly tightening as he grit his teeth. "Well played, woman, well played..." he growled, revealing a hand with a pair of Jacks.

"Don't even give me that, you've won the last six hands."

"And you broke my winning streak. This does not make me happy." 

Shiloh leaned back in her chair, grinning as Soldier gathered the cards up to shuffle. "You'd still be ahead in Vegas if you were only losing every seventh hand."

"Losing is not an option to be considered, not in war and not in poker."

She slammed a hand down on a card to prevent it from shooting into her lap as Soldier flipped cards at her. "Hey, watch where you're tossing those-"

"-hey, Shiloh."

Both Shiloh and Soldier looked up as Engineer poked his head into the room; he looked tired and was smeared with grease and oil, but was smiling in a way that clearly said 'I know something you don't.'

"Hey Dell. Did you need me up there?"

"Yep. Let's get a look at that thing on your arm."

Shiloh put her dealt hand onto the table in a neat pile. "We'll pick this up later?"

"I am holding you to that."

"You're holding me to a lot of things," she chuckled, grabbing her rifle and heading out to follow Engineer up the stairs.

Engineer and Medic had managed to get a sort of passable workshop set up - she wasn't sure where they'd gotten the tables and handful of chairs but there were mechanical pieces strung out and hooked to little portable generators and computer screens, with adjustable desk lamps missing their shades clamped to the table edges to provide light to work by. One of the tables nearest the barn's door was empty save for a toolbox, some miscellaneous tools already out, and another light clamped there.

It was to this far table that Engineer led her, and she dropped into the indicated chair as he circled around to the other side and dropped onto a stool; this setup had her staring at the barn door with her left arm resting on the table and Engineer sitting so he was facing her.

"All right, there's no real way to go about this where you'll be comfortable the entire time," he said, clicking the light on and adjusting it as high as it would stretch. "If you need to stretch or get some feeling back anywhere just say something." He held out a hand and Shiloh extended her arm toward him, putting the prototype cloaking device squarely in his palm. 

There was a scuff of boots on the ground as Medic stepped up behind her while Engineer began to carefully examine the device; Shiloh supposed both would be examining the thing and that she should expect to be here a while...she quite suddenly wished she had her book with her.


	19. Ch 19 - The Things I Do For You

The three hour mark found Medic, Engineer, and Shiloh still up in the makeshift workshop, Shiloh having flipped her chair around backwards so she could rest an arm across its back and doze fitfully as Engineer grunted and cussed quietly, trying to prize the hinges on the cloaker device open.

"Quite a design," Medic commented into the near-silence. Currently the German was almost laying across the table, carefully holding spacers and a few screwdrivers in place as Engineer tried to tap pins out of the hinges.

"Yeah, I don't think this darn thing was meant to open once clamped somewhere," Engineer panted, trading an awl and hammer for a pair of pliers; with a twist and another grunt he pulled a pin free and added it to the pathetically tiny pile near his elbow. "What was that damn fool thinking..." He set his tools down and took up the ones Medic had been holding in place, carefully adjusting them down the hinge to get at the next pin.

Medic simply sniffed in response and grasped the tools again once Engineer had them in position. From somewhere among the mess of circuits and screens on the other tables came a soft beep, prompting the man to turn around to look. "It would seem something has finished."

"Yeah, well, it's going to have to wait, no way in hell am I stopping what I'm doing now," Engineer growled, jaw set as he began carefully tapping the tip of the awl into the hinge. "Damn piece of junk...remind me to slap a spy when we get around to rescuing their dumb asses."

There was the sound of feet pounding up the stairs with Sniper and Spy coming through the doorway shortly after. 

Spy gave the two of them and the dozing Shiloh an appraising look. "It would seem you are having a particularly frustrating afternoon."

"Don't even start with me, Spy, I'm ready to stomp a mother hubbard into the goddamn ground." He was silent a moment as he manipulated the awl and tiny hammer. "What are you two doing up here anyway?"

"Miss Pauling ought to be here shortly. I think a confrontation is in order."

Engineer paused, looking up at that. "A what now?"

"Answers, he wants answers," Sniper said dryly. "And if Pauling doesn't have anything for us I think it's time we spoke to the Administrator ourselves."

Medic snorted, rolling his eyes. "Then we should hope Miss Pauling has answers because they will otherwise be beyond our reach."

Spy sighed. "Yes, it may very well be a pipe dream but we must try. If this man who hunts our guest here is an old enemy of our Administrator's, and if she wants us to have the means to do something about him for her, then we need everything she knows."

Engineer shrugged at that and focused on the cloaking device again. "Wish you luck with that one, partner. She doesn't tell anyone anything."

Spy found himself a crate to sit on and settled in, silently staring at the barn's door; Sniper opted to lean against the side of the truck, watching Engineer and Medic work. After a while he bent slightly to try and catch a glimpse of Shiloh's face.

"Asleep again? How much sleep does one person need?"

Shiloh stirred and turned her head enough to open one eye to look at him. "Not as asleep as I look, and I don't pass up an opportunity to nap. Never know when you're going to need the extra sleep later, like say when you have to spend a night wet, cold, miserable, and awake." She yawned and sat up, stretching as much as she could while not moving her arm.

Engineer glanced up at her briefly. "Fingers still got feeling in them?"

"Yeah, I'm fine, Dell. A little stiff and my ass is numb, but nothing I can't tolerate."

Chuckling a bit he swapped out for the pliers again and began working the pin out. "Just about got this licked, at least."

"I'd hope so, I've lost track of how long I've been sitting here."

As the pin came loose he gave her a toothy, if tired, grin. "Taking your arm off would have been easier at this point."

"Ah, no thank you, I'm pretty attached to it."

As Engineer began working on the last pin holding the hinge together there was the sound of a small motorbike pulling up to the barn door, as of yet out of sight but still very much audible. All but Engineer turned their attention to the door where, after a few minutes of silence after the engine outside shut off, Miss Pauling came bustling through; she still had a helmet on and had a messenger bag slung over a shoulder, and looked fairly rumpled.

"Did everyone make it back?"

Spy sat up straighter on his crate. "We are all accounted for, Miss Pauling. What do you have for us?"

"Not...much, I'm afraid. The uh, the Administrator still isn't answering my calls, so I tried to do some digging on my own. I think I at least found out the man's name - what are you doing?" she interrupted herself, pausing next to Shiloh to stare down at their little cluster.

"Getting this stupid thing off my arm," was Shiloh's response, as Engineer finally let out a triumphant grunt and yanked the last pin free. 

Medic let out a whoosh of a sigh and straightened, rotating shoulders and stretching, as Shiloh did similar, pulling her arm to her and massaging her left wrist with a hand; the skin was bloody and smelled, and what skin was visible under the old blood was puffy and reddened with a lengthy but fading blood blister. "Thank God, Dell - you are amazing." 

"Yes, yes, compliment him after we have tended to your arm," Medic said, all but dragging Shiloh away from the table and down the stairs.

"...well. What's this about doing some digging?" Engineer asked once Medic and Shiloh were out of sight. He was still hunched over at the table, turning over the two halves of the cloaking device in his hands.

"Digging, right - have a look." Miss Pauling moved over to the table and opened the messenger bag, pulling out file folders of yellowed newspaper clippings and papers, along with the folded up sketch Shiloh had provided previously. She arranged them carefully in the empty table space, trying not to crowd Engineer - who got up and moved his tools and the device anyway - while displaying as much as she could. 

Once situated she began to unstrap her helmet and speak. "All right, here's what I have...using the sketch Shiloh made for us, I started inquiring about him - and don't ask how or where, I would have to make you disappear - and found a few leads. Following up on them got me these-" she touched the newspaper clippings, pulling a few free to reveal old articles about a 'genius inventor' building artificial limbs and 'mechanical marvels.' "These are about a man named Ebenniah Zane - if this is the same man, he's someone who actually used to work for the Mann family."

"Used to?" Spy repeated, finally getting up to come stand at Miss Pauling's shoulder.

"Used to," she said, sifting through the articles before pulling two free. "Seems at some point this Mr. Zane had an...accident, that killed his sister Delilah, here's her obituary. And then this one here, while it doesn't detail what kind of accident it was, does say that Zane was injured so badly no doctor thought he'd ever recover."

Spy delicately plucked the obituary from her hands and read it briefly, frowning. "What did this...Zane...do for the Manns exactly?"

"I'm not clear on that, unfortunately. There isn't anything I could find about what he did for the Manns specifically, only what he did before coming to work for them along with a few mentionings of unrelated inventions he patented during his time with them...and, of course, there's no record of what happened after the accident, not even anything confirming he recovered, only that no one thought he ever would. And I'd probably know one way or the other if the Administrator was answering her calls."

Engineer crossed his arms and leaned against one of the nearby tables. "Should we be worried about that? I mean, this guy is her enemy after all - no reason to believe maybe he got her, right?"

Miss Pauling pushed her glasses up further on her nose. "I really doubt that - the Administrator is talented at staying out of everyone's reach...like mine, for example, which is why I don't have anything definitive for you. There's really nothing we can do about it except keep trying to contact her, though knowing her she'll contact us when she decides she needs to. Here, you boys look through this - IF this man is actually Ebenniah Zane, here's everything I could find on him. Where is everyone else?"

"Sleeping, last I saw any of them," Sniper answered, moving over to start looking over the papers on the table.

"All right then, I'll let them rest. If you need me I'll be trying to call the Administrator."

Engineer nodded, then twitched a bit. "Oh, right, one of these finished."

"One of what?"

He gestured at the mechanical mess sitting around, hooked up to screens and cobbled-together remotes and keyboards. "Took apart a tank is all. I'm hoping I'll get something useful out of the information stored in it - like maybe where it came from or was supposed to return to." As he spoke he moved toward the one he thought had beeped earlier, wiping smudges of oil off the tiny screen he'd hooked to it. "I also pulled the control cores and innards of those Engineerbots and the two Spybots we could recover - I'm bound to hit on something eventually."

Miss Pauling nodded, closing the now-empty messenger bag and scooting it under a table with her toe. "All right, keep on with that, it's as best a chance as everything else. You boys know where to find me if you discover anything."

\--------------------------------------------

Scout pitched three cards into the pile, sulking. "Man, all this waiting around...freaking stupid."

"Can't go anywhere when you don't know where you're going, lad," Demoman replied quietly, drumming fingers along the top edges of the cards in his hand. "Speaking of not going anywhere." He slid his cards into a stack and dropped them to the table face-down. "You've got me played into a corner, lass."

"Yeah yeah, rub it in that they're beating us," Scout grumbled. "Hate this stupid game anyway."

Soldier chuckled, wide grin on his face. "She is the best poker partner."

Shiloh gave him a look from across the table. "I am not some sort of poker savant, I'm just getting lucky. I've played more this afternoon than I think I've played my entire life."

Demoman leaned back in his chair as Shiloh and Soldier pulled their chips in. "Besides, how often do you get paid to sit, drink, and play cards? Not a bad way to spend a couple days, boyos...looking forward to getting back to work though."

"Three days, man. Three freaking days - how long can it possibly take for egghead up there to figure something out?"

"Well Scout, if you think you can do better..." Demoman trailed off, giving the younger male a look that was part annoyance, part resignation. Scout simply glowered at him, tossed his cards down, and stomped off.

"Did you just set Scout on Dell?"

The grin flashed at Shiloh in response was wide. "Maybe I did. Better him than me."

She shook her head and pushed back from the table, glancing at her wrist where Javier's watch still adorned it. "All right gentlemen, I think three hours of poker is my limit and Mundy usually drags me outside right around now."

"You two've been spending a lot of time out there together, how's your aim?" Demo asked, throwing an arm over the back of his chair.

She picked up the rifle by the strap from where it was leaning against the chair beside her. "Well, I'm consistently hitting what I'm aiming at if that counts for anything."

"Ha! We'll have you a proper mercenary by the end of all this. Maybe if something happens to Sniper you can step in as back up."

Shiloh frowned heavily at that. "God, I hope not...first off, I'd rather not contemplate Mundy - or any of you - biting the big one. Secondly, I'd suck. Like, really suck."

Demo laughed. "Nah, nah, see lass - we'll get you where you need to be! Not a problem, put a gun in your hand and have you killing like a true mercenary in no time."

"I really don't see myself treading down that career path, but I guess thanks for the vote of confidence?"

Chuckling she started across the room, Demoman's laughter ringing behind her, when a sudden loud thud made her pause and Demoman went silent. She looked over her shoulder to find Soldier and Demoman both looking up at the ceiling.

"What was that?"

"No bloody clue, Soldier. That ceiling is stone, we shouldn't have heard a bloody thing through it."

"Was that from the ceiling? I couldn't tell," Shiloh said quietly, her gaze moving upward despite herself.

Seconds later one of the doors in the hallway was blasted inward and there was a clank of metal feet on stone.

"Ah bloody hell," Demoman growled. "Time to put that practice to use, lass!"

\----------------------------------------

Engineer scratched his head as he looked over the notes he'd compiled from what he'd pulled from the tank's computer. "Well, this doesn't make a lick of sense unless this tank actually was at every base we've been to."

Medic was making quick, light marks in pencil on a map, using rulers to narrow the coordinates down to approximate points. "You are more knowledgeable of this than I, are these tanks piloted by their passengers or are they controlled elsewhere?"

"Beats me, though it's looking like these things might be controlled centrally, somewhere. Just can't say for certain... We still have those Spybots to poke through and those I feel are going to have where they've been stored in there - these aren't the first ones I've ripped apart and studied some, they're just the most intact ones I've gotten to play with. Each of these things is activated and sent orders from a central control point, but they're programmed with a bit of autonomy and have a memory storage so Mann can track where they are. I think." Engineer tossed the useless notes into a pile on the table and rapped his fingers on what was left of the head of a Spybot. "These are going to be a bit tricky is all, take some more time. I didn't have a hand in making or programming any of these so deciphering what Mann's put in here isn't exactly a walk in the park."

"This at least confirms we are not safe in these bases," Medic said quietly, plucking his glasses from his nose and cleaning them on a sleeve. "We also can study their armor - these are no ordinary bots."

"Knowing how to knock them over is fine. Knowing that they have our base locations? Doesn't do us much good if you ask me," Engineer sighed. "All that tells us is where not to go, not where this guy is. We can't feasibly check every base under the dang sun, it just ain't practical."

"Very true, howev-"

They both paused as there was a bang from downstairs, then looked at one another.

"What in tarnation was that?"

Medic's expression hardened and he reached to tug his coat on. "Nothing good, I imagine."

With an exasperated growl, Engineer moved to retrieve his shotgun off the back bumper of the truck.

\----------------------------------------

"Oh dear, what a mess...do pardon the intrusion, dears."

Shiloh was dragged backwards and flung roughly to the floor by Soldier behind a table he'd flipped onto its side as, out in the hallway, a purple-robed robot turned its head to stare into the mess hall at them. 

The explosive entrance was jarring enough but was made even worse by the sickeningly sweet, tittering woman's voice coming from it - the damn thing even giggled!

"What do we have?" Soldier growled, putting his back against the table next to Shiloh.

"Uh-" She gestured at her rifle wordlessly and he nodded curtly.

"One weapon between the three of us, I like those odds."

"...you are insane."

"Only a little."

\---------------------------------------------

Flagship noted the three in the room at the end of the hallway - including its priority target - and then turned attention to the doorways opening across from it. The other men must be inside those rooms; extending a hand toward the nearest opening door, Flagship's arm began to emit a high-pitched hum moments before firing off a brilliant arc of blue-white energy, obliterating what was left of the door and sending the man - whichever one it might have been - backwards to slam into the wall and begin twitching uncontrollably.

Moving quickly, much more quickly than any organic entity could hope to react to, it aimed its recharging arm at the next nearest door where a man in a dress shirt was emerging. The jolt of electricity went wide, however, as something struck the robot in the side of the head; a flattened bullet dropped to the floor at Flagship's feet, and internal systems began reporting minor cosmetic damage to its left optical sensors. The man in the dress shirt ducked back into the safety and cover of the small room with a curse - oh well, next target.

By this time two other men had made it from their rooms, one small and pathetic and one larger and glacially slow - Flagship easily sidestepped the thrown fist and then swept its arm out to send the small male to topple like a rag doll down the hallway. The large man attempted to seize Flagship's free arm then jerked back as he received a shock from the prepped but as of yet not fired electrical shot.

"Listen, it doesn't need to be messy," Flagship tut-tutted, moving with a strangely fluid grace to duck and dodge the man's blows. "Just give me what I came for and everyone can have a nice, clean, and quick death. I won't even take a trophy."

Flagship's proximity sensors bleeped moments before there was a gush of flame from one of the other remaining doors; the shawl wrapped around it immediately lit up which set off warnings of imminent overheating, but before the robot could rip the shawl off the gout of flame was immediately followed by a blast of compressed air that sent the robot slamming back against the door frame.

"This didn't have to be messy," Flagship sighed as now there were a few deafening blasts and then the tell-tale pinging of buckshot off its metal body. "Initiating crowd defenses." Its eyes shifted to red as a compartment in its chest opened - there, just barely visible through the remaining flame-engulfed remains of its shawl, were the softly flickering lights of inner mechanical workings, and next to that-

"Everybody down!" came a shout from somewhere near the floor, as Flagship armed and then immediately released a palm-sized grenade.

\---------------------------------------------

"Nice shot lass!"

"Wasn't what I was aiming for," Shiloh grunted, ducking back down far enough to be mostly covered by the table but able to see over it.

"The others are jumping in, but we need weapons," Soldier grunted, peering around the side of the table. "We are pinned in here."

Demoman jumped the table then, plopping down between them. "Going to need a plan, fighting in a hallway won't help us any, we'll cut ourselves to pieces before we got any chance of taking that metal monstrosity down."

"And you and I cannot use our weapons without blowing up our own teammates," Soldier added. "Can you shoot it again, Shiloh?"

Shiloh shook her head, then winced as she saw Scout take a heavy blow and roll down the hallway to crumple near the doorway. "I don't think I can - that first shot didn't do a thing and I don't trust my aim on a moving target enough to not accidentally hit someone."

"Trust your judgement, and even still that hallway is a problem - we need to get that thing outside," Demo growled. "How sturdy you think this table is?"

"Sturdy enough. Are we charging?"

"Damn right we're charging, lad."

Shiloh dipped back down behind the table. "Wait a minute then, you'll trample Scout."

"Where is he?"

"Near the door. I can get him."

"You sure?"

"As sure as I can be. All right, here I go-"

Shiloh rolled out from behind the table and in an awkward half-crouched crawl scurried over to the right side of the doorway, beginning to peek out when-

"Everybody down!"

She ducked back behind the door, back pressed against the wall, when there was a loud bang that set her ears ringing, plus a flash of light and smoke. She heard a cry of pain from just outside the doorway - Scout had shouted to warn them, and whatever had just gone off had hit him.

"Out of time woman!" 

"Wait wait wait-" she yelled back at Soldier and Demo. Smoke was beginning to rush into the room; she sucked in a breath and turned to press her stomach and shoulder to the door frame, reaching through to blindly grope around for Scout, her fingers finally coming into contact with fabric; she grabbed and dragged until she could almost see him through the smoke, switching to grab him by the waistband once she had him close enough.

"Go!" she shouted, throwing herself backward and to the side, pulling a groaning Scout with her. As she and Scout landed in a tangle to the side Soldier and Demo stood up with the table, but before they could charge a figure came rushing through the doorway in a shroud of smoke.

Two pinpoints of red light were in the smoke, and slowly turned to look down at Scout and Shiloh.

"Hello dearie."

"Ah shit."

"Oh no you don't!" Soldier, sans table, was suddenly there and bashing a chair blindly in the general direction of the glowing eyes. The robot took the blow easily and struck out at Soldier, striking him in the chest; Soldier growled and seized the arm even as it struck him, clinging and letting the bot drag him forward, slamming his helmeted head into the same eye Shiloh had managed to hit earlier and shattering the glass covering.

"Oh, now really, was that necessary?" The robot let out a sigh reminiscent of a hydraulic hiss and raised its other fist as it began to spark with electricity.

"Tavish!" Shiloh shouted, one hand reaching to unstrap her rifle.

"Right here!" And then there he was, emerging from the smoke with another chair in hand. "You need to get going, lass - get out of here and quick-like!"

"What about Scout?"

"We'll handle it, just get somewhere that ain't here."

Shiloh pulled Scout as far from the robot as she could, propping him against the wall after pulling his scattergun off his back. "Tavish, catch!"

Demoman caught the tossed gun with one hand, letting the chair drop. "Thanks lass! Better than nothing! All right you shiny metal shitcan-"

As Demoman began to fire, Shiloh pulled in another breath of mostly clear air, hit the watch on her wrist, then crawled for the door and out into the hall, feeling along the wall and narrowly avoiding being stepped on as two of the mercenaries - she couldn't tell who with the smoke - rushed passed her. The smoke was much thicker out here, making her eyes water; she was using her hand to feel along the wall blindly and nearly toppled over when her hand shot out into empty space - a doorway. There was sunlight and fresh air through that doorway - did this lead to the balcony?

Outdoors - air, freedom, somewhere to hide...and perfect timing on it too, as the cloak failed.

She scrambled on hands and knees until she was out of the smoke and in the sunlight. Without a second thought she vaulted the concrete wall and dashed down the hill, heading for the thickest trees.

\------------------------------------------

Flagship jabbed a hand into the male's gut and fired the full force of the stored energy, the man falling off its arm near-instantly as he lost all control of his muscles; the robot quickly kicked the man away, sending him crashing through chairs to hit the far wall. It then turned to look down again, finding the injured small male and a black-skinned male crouched nearby aiming a gun at it, but where was the woman? She couldn't have simply disappeared...perhaps she had slipped out the door while Flagship had been otherwise occupied with the rather rude man clinging to its arm.

What to do what to do...the disabling bursts of electrical energies were incredibly effective against organics but doing so was draining its primary power core - it would need to conserve power enough to manage its defenses and make it home with its quarry, and now with a reduced power level it would likely be pursuing its quarry on foot. How irritating.

Well, it would just kill the men quickly and then get to pursuing - even if they didn't earn such clean deaths there were now time constraints to consider.

It shuddered a bit as the black-skinned male began firing at it; the projectiles from that weapon at this range were actually penetrating, quite alarming real-

"-RAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!"

Out of nowhere there were a pair of meaty fists clamping around its head, ripping it backward and slinging it down the hallway to clatter into a heap in the floor.

All right, perhaps it had underestimated these men. Flagship stood and then was again pelted with shotgun fire from behind as well as projectiles from the front, and that massive human was rushing toward it again.

Abruptly, and quite unintentionally, Flagship then let out a buzz of alarm as an electrical jolt struck it - well, no, it wasn't a jolt, it was a continuous stream of it and was rapidly overwhelming its inner workings, threatening a full system shut down.

There: beside it, appearing from thin air, the man in the dress shirt - he had attached a device, unnoticed, to the robot's hip.

"SUCH rudeness." It took an unsteady swing at the slender male, clipping his shoulder, as it took several steps backward into the room behind it; now shielded for the time being from being shot at, it ripped the sapping device free and hurled it at the vague outline of the slender male through the smoke, hearing a grunt as something connected.

With internal systems bleeping at it, Flagship continued to step backwards until it was on the balcony it had entered from - it would need a moment to vent heat, assess damage, and recover.

...from behind it, however, it could hear the sounds of footsteps in grass and leaves, rapidly moving away from it. Turning its head it managed to just barely glimpse a flash of red hair and the glint of light off a rifle's metal body, disappearing among the trees.

The priority target was out here, where the men were not. How fortuitous.

"I will be back for you all, do not go anywhere." Flagship launched itself over the edge of the balcony with a quick burst from the rocket propulsion units in its legs, landing down the hill and on a dirt road. The sounds of the fleeing woman were much clearer here away from shouting men and gunfire, and she left a trail of trampled grass and disturbed leaves and foliage in her wake.

"This is turning into quite the headache...the things I do for you, dear brother."

Flagship did one more quick internal check - calculations showed a boost from its rockets would be draining without any real benefit in the long run. Pursuit would have to be limited to on foot.


	20. Ch 20 - Dampened Spirits

During her sprint down the hill Shiloh finished what she'd started in the mess hall - namely, loosening the rifle strap to lengthen it so she could wear it over a shoulder to her hip. She would have to pop the strap loose to draw the weapon but she couldn't run with it banging into her elbow and hip when it was hanging off just one shoulder; wearing it slung across her back kept it out of the way and also prevented it from bouncing as she ran. It also kept it out of the way of the things she was rushing through: branches pulled at her hair and clothes despite her efforts to swat them aside, and if she weren't wearing pants her legs would be cut to pieces by this point. Usually she wouldn't go sprinting full tilt through underbrush like this but...well, given the alternative was being caught by a killer robot, Shiloh was reasonably certain she could handle cuts, bruises, and maybe gouging an eye out on a branch.

'Oh man...do not turn around to check,' she groaned to herself as, even over the noise she was making, she could hear someone - someTHING - following behind her.

All right, time to think - she'd spent time in this area, but not on this side of the lake, and while she might have a lead on her pursuer now it likely wouldn't last. What she needed was somewhere to either hide or somewhere she could ditch her follower, in any manner she could...problem being, she didn't know these woods nearly so well as she did the ones on the other side of the lake.

Spy had mentioned mine shafts in this area but not specifically where they were - she remembered him saying there was one within a half mile of their base, but not in which direction.

She filed that away as a potential hiding place but it was only useful if she could put a suitable amount of distance between her and whoever was behind her. She vaulted over a fallen log and skidded down a small incline in a shower of dead leaves; at least at the moment she had the added speed that came from running full tilt down a hill...she just really hoped there wasn't a bluff or a dead end at the bottom of it.

\--------------------------------------

Sniper slowly sat up, the back of his head aching and his face burning as he picked himself up off the floor. He had no clear idea of what hit him aside from the clues left behind in the form of fragments of what had once been the door to the room he'd taken, but along with the bleeding cuts on his face and bare arms and the throbbing headache from colliding with the wall every muscle in his body ached.

He yanked a few sizable splinters from his arm as he shoved himself to his feet, taking a few unsteady steps before waiting for the world to stop spinning. From outside in the hallway the sounds of combat had faded - he could hear his teammates shouting to one another, and there seemed to be a thick cloud of smoke out there. What the hell had just happened?

Despite himself he flinched reflexively when a figure popped out of the smoke, but he relaxed almost immediately when he saw that it was Medic. "What the hell just happened?"

"A robot found us. Are you badly injured?" The German was looking him up and down.

Sniper wiped a hand over his face and came back with a handful of blood and some dislodged splinters. "Not badly, got one hell of a headache though."

Medic frowned and moved further inside, forcing him to stand through a cursory examination. "...there appears to be no concussion. You may bleed for now, I am needed elsewhere."

"A robot hit us?"

"Ja."

Beyond the man Sniper could see the smoke begin to swirl wildly even as he heard the telltale sounds of compressed air blasts. "It didn't kill anyone, did it?"

"Not so far as I'm aware, but there are still others to check on."

With that Medic swept from the room, one arm over his face to use his sleeve to help filter out remaining smoke. Sniper waited a moment or two longer, still waiting for the slight dizziness to settle, then he poked his head out into the hall himself.

There was a massive scorch mark on the floor not far from his door - Sniper vaguely remembered through the haze hearing someone shout to get down moments before a loud blast had gone off - and through the remaining smoke he could see the figure of Pyro, still blasting the air clear, and the milling forms of some of his team beyond him in the mess hall. His attention briefly flicked down to the floor just in front of the mess's door, where there was a large blood smear that tracked in through the door and off to one side beyond where he could see.

"Where is it?" For a long moment he received no answer; he pulled his aviators off to wipe blood splatter - his blood, no less - onto his sleeve and counted himself lucky he'd been wearing them when the door had blown inward.

"Is outside." Sniper could see the silhouette of Heavy coming through a busted doorway, the one that led to the balcony. "It is chasing."

"Chasing? Chasing w- Oh you've got to be bloody kidding me." There was only one person it could be chasing; Sniper felt his headache intensify just thinking about it. "Scout? Where's Scout?"

Heavy wordlessly gestured for the mess hall; Sniper paused long enough to grab his gun before hurrying down the hall. "Scout?"

The younger male was slumped against the wall, burns and cuts down his right arm. Medic was tending to him and he seemed aware enough, just visibly wincing as the medigun forced torn flesh to mend.

"We're going to need those legs of yours, Scout. Are you good to get back on your feet?"

Scout sat in silence a few moments and let the gun do its work before using the wall to leverage himself back to his feet. He stretched carefully and patted himself down before finally nodding. "Yeah...yeah, I'm good. What's the plan?"

"We're going for a jog. Uh-" Sniper took a quick accounting of those around him - he needed Scout's speed the most at the moment, but he'd need muscle to handle the robot once they caught up to it. "...Pyro, you're with me. Demo, Soldier, get your weapons and the rest of you follow as best you can. I want to scatter this thing's inner pieces across the countryside. Spy - your sapper still intact?"

Spy nodded. "I am with you. Let us move."

Demoman tossed Scout his scattergun before shouldering passed everyone with Soldier on his heels. Sniper spun around and hurried for the balcony with the other three behind him; as they passed by the makeshift office the door opened a crack with Miss Pauling just barely visible. Ignoring her Sniper led the others outside and over the balcony, then paused briefly as he took in the scenery.

"Trail is pretty damn clear. Scout, you know what to do."

"I'm on it. I'm going to tear that stupid thing a few new power sockets."

Scout took a few moments to get up to his normal speed, still visibly in pain but pushing through it; he disappeared among the tree trunks as the other three rushed along in his wake.

\-----------------------------------------

Well, it was pretty clear there wouldn't be a chance at getting far enough away from the robot pursuer to find some way to hide; Shiloh was hard-pressed to just stay ahead of the thing, and to make things worse she was getting tired - adrenaline could only carry someone so far and having to deal with the terrain was an extra drain on her stamina that she didn't need right now.

Her mind was racing, trying to hit on a plan to shake the robot off her trail, when finally her brain registered that she was running out of ground - up ahead of her the ground abruptly ended. Eyes widening, Shiloh threw herself to the side and into a roll to halt her forward momentum, coming to a stop in a pile of leaves against a bush about ten feet from where the ground dropped away.

Scurrying partly on her knees she edged up toward the drop off and peered over it; she must have finally come to one of the abandoned mine shafts - she was on top of an earthen wall made with wooden beams holding the dirt back and in place, with the ground easily twenty feet below her. Well, "ground" - beneath her all she could see were leaves and detritus partially covering boards and corrugated metal sheets, and from somewhere she could hear the faint sound of rushing water.

'Oh no...'

She had an instant to spin around as the footsteps behind her finally caught up to her, one arm upraised. "Wait a mome-" Desperately she tried to spring away, deciding that falling twenty feet might be the better alternative-

The robot, apparently not having noted the change in elevation, seized her mid-jump and the two of them sailed through the air, the robot adding momentum to Shiloh's sudden leap; she managed to plant her feet into the robot's chest and shove, ripping her shirt and separating them both, before they crashed onto and then through the boards and metal below, dropping into an icy stream hidden beneath.

Immediately things went pitch black as water rushed into her nose, mouth, and plugged her ears; the water was rapidly moving and sent Shiloh tumbling against the sides and the rocky bottom, even over something that felt like a drop, until at last she slammed into something painfully solid and her rifle became hooked on it. It took her a few precious seconds to realize whatever she'd collided with was lifting her up and she thrashed outward at it, thinking the robot had her again.

She sucked in a noisy, sputtering breath when finally her head broke the surface; she was still being carried upward and her thrashing had done nothing to dislodge her - she tugged at the rifle strap trying to pop it loose and then realized...she was going up, but also back. In fact, she was...

She dug fingers into whatever it was beneath her, scraping slimy wood and then plunging her hands into what felt like a trough of water. As her sense of where where her head was in relation to where 'up' was began to shift she realized she was ever so slightly beginning to tip backward - she would be dumped back into the water head-first if she didn't untangle herself or find some way to-

She didn't manage it - the rifle was wedged solidly against whatever was under her and there wasn't enough slack in the strap to pop it free. Managing to get a single foot hooked under something solid so she wouldn't flip over and strangle herself in the rifle strap, she sucked in a breath and was dumped back into the stream - thankfully the water was deep enough that she wasn't crushed between the wooden structure and the bottom, though she was dragged through a slimy, sand-like substance before she again was pulled upward and broke the surface of the water.

Finally, through the panic as she slapped at the structure behind her, a thought broke through to the forefront of her mind - a water wheel...she was hung up on a water wheel, that had to be it.

'C'mon, c'mon...' 

With a loud pop the strap finally came free and she struggled to keep one hand on the strap and gun while trying to get a grip on the wheel behind it. It was pitch black in here, forcing her to feel around blindly for something, anything, to swing herself into the middle of the wheel; the current here was strong so she couldn't tread water forever and didn't feel like being waterboarded and drowning in the dark and alone.

Well, maybe not alone. Mentally she cursed the creak of the wheel turning and the rush of the water pushing it... Where was the robot?

It was awkward maneuvering herself with only one hand but she managed to at last flounder her way to the side of the wheel and slip in between the slats of the side; the outer-most part of the wheel's ring was made up of several wide beams cut and fitted together, and even in the dark Shiloh could manage to slide her boots along the slippery wood to move with the wheel - the water here was up to her thighs and frothy but it was better than riding the wheel around and getting submerged every fifteen seconds.

She almost dropped the rifle as, purely on accident, the stock knocked into one of the slats. Would the gun even fire now that it'd been submerged? Would it fire if it had time to dry out? How long would that take? Involuntarily her teeth chattered as she shuffled along with the wheel, catching her breath and getting the rifle back onto her back and the strap secure while straining to hear something, anything, over the sounds of the water. 

This was uncomfortably similar to waking up alone and tied up in that locker...but there wouldn't be Spy or Javier here this time, it would be a robot coming to get her and she was just as vulnerable here as she'd been in the locker - maybe even more so, since her mobility would be hampered by the water.

Still shuffling along with the wheel's movement she sucked in an uneasy breath as, out in the murk, a light flickered to life.

\----------------------------------

One optical sensor was entirely out, ruined by first a bullet, then a helmet, and then the plunge into the water. Flagship had not been able to shut all its vents quickly enough and knew it had water sloshing around near delicate inner circuits - already it was trying to assess what systems were most at risk of being shorted out while its servos and auto-pilot functions fought to establish an equilibrium to bring the robot upright and orient it.

It was dashed against rocks and against the rock wall as the water shoved it along. It registered something bang into its cranium several times before it was then beyond that obstacle and washed over a waterfall to land in a pool that was thankfully deep enough that it wasn't crushed against submerged rocks beneath the pounding water.

Its systems established which direction was up and the robot's logic centers decided it was far more important to not short out than it was to conserve power, and the rocket units fired to propel the robot up and out of the water to hover just above the water's surface, the rockets vaporizing the liquid and sending a screen of steam billowing up.

Flagship opened its chest cavity to drain out the water there, turning its head this way and that to take in what it could see through its one remaining functional eye. The fire from the rockets caused odd shadows to flicker across the walls - behind was the waterfall; there was the pool below it, and through the steam Flagship could make out a rotting dock that connected to a flat, wide landing of packed dirt and stone; the landing was large enough that the light from the rocket's fire was not enough to light it so that the robot could gauge the size, but it was in a large cavern with a set of stairs carved into the rock wall that led back up to the top of the waterfall.

Flagship angled itself and, with a final burst of rockets, soared toward and landed heavily on the landing at the edge of the dock. It let its arms hang to its side, vents opening to drain along arms and legs as damage assessment began to run. It seemed the only vital system with damage was heat dispersion along with its central mobility control - depth perception sensors and balance gyros were offline but could be restarted and re-calibrated, and further scans discovered that a ventilation panel had been partially fused shut with melted plastic wire covering when it had been engulfed earlier in the base.

Nothing so catastrophically damaged that it couldn't complete its goals, however. Now, where had the priority target gone...

It was possible the woman had been washed down the waterfall, same as Flagship had been; it turned its head to gaze at the water as, with a soft click, its remaining eye emitted a beam of light - there would be an annoying glare on anything it chose to look at, but there wasn't enough ambient light for night vision mode to be effective.

The pool of water fed by the waterfall was fairly large - sensors showed it was at least fifty feet wide from the base of the falls to the far wall where the water drained through a large iron grate. The depth was unknown and there was no body pinned against the grate; Flagship bent to peer under the dock and found no cowering human there either.

It turned to sweep the light across the landing - there were iron rails pounded into the floor at the far end where a carved tunnel led elsewhere inside the mine. There were no wet footprints apparent on the ground anywhere near aside from the puddle around Flagship's own feet, so the woman had clearly not climbed out of the water down here.

That was worrying - if the woman was not here then that left two possible outcomes: she had climbed out on the above area and was escaping, or she was trapped somewhere and drowning. Neither option was particularly good, though Flagship hoped that the woman had not drowned as brother would be exceptionally displeased if he did not get to take her life himself.

It was time to check above it, where the stairs led; Flagship clanked over and began to climb up.

\---------------------------------------

It had taken some adjusting but Shiloh watched uneasily as in the distance a source of light moved about. It reminded her somewhat of seeing a sunset on the horizon, making her think that maybe somewhere ahead of her was another drop off which would help explain the volume of roaring water. 

She hunched down until the water was up to her shoulders, moving in an awkward crouching crawl along the wheel, as the light came closer; as she became accustomed to the dimness she could start to make out what was around her, including spotting the central arm that the wheel turned on. It reached from the wheel over to the shore, fifteen feet away, and she could make out a section where a second waterwheel must have once been.

One exceptionally interesting detail of her surroundings however was what the wheels connected to: there were several elevators with pulley systems, old and crumbling, connected to a collection of simple machines that were all connected to the water wheel; she could just barely make out where the mechanisms that the wheels turned were hanging above the rest of the machinery - apparently the wheels had powered the elevators back when the mine was open, and they'd been disconnected and left behind when the mine had closed.

She had no idea how the pieces would fit together - it was too dark and too far away for her to get a clear look at it or even a clear count of how many crumbling elevators there were - but maybe she could find a way to connect everything again and-

Shiloh sucked in a breath and hunched even lower into the water as the light source came fully into view, rising up from where she assumed another drop off had to be. It was a single beam of light and she could just barely see through the glare it cast that it was that damned robot, one of its eyes lit up and searching.

...she supposed hoping the robot had been washed away had been a bit too good to hope for, but damn if it didn't dampen the spirits more than being dumped in cold water did. At any rate, repairing the elevators was officially not an option with that thing around. Under the water she put fingers around the watch on her wrist then held her breath as the light swept closer.

\------------------------------------------

Scout too almost went tumbling over the drop off when he reached it, skidding in the leaves and throwing himself backward to save himself from going over. For a moment he lay on his back in the leaves, panting and aching still from his encounter with the robot (and then the wall afterward) but finally he rolled over and to his feet, head cocked to the side as he listened.

Was that water? He swore he heard water though he hadn't seen any streams or anything on his run down here, and it sounded pretty freaking close too.

One thing he was sure of was Shiloh's trail ended here; had she gone over? He moved to look over the edge and, yep, confirmed - Shiloh had gone over, there was a big hole in the ground below him. Weird that the ground was made of wood and old metal sheets, though...he guessed that made it a ceiling, maybe? Huh. Ceiling to what, then?

Also, how was he going to get down? He supposed he could climb down this wall thing - there were boards and beams holding the dirt up, but the ground was pretty far down and if Shiloh had crashed through the ceiling-ground below, maybe it wouldn't even hold him. Also, it sounded like the water noises were coming up out of that hole he could see...if she'd fallen through and into some sort of underground river, that would not be good.

He was still standing there, deliberating, when Spy, Sniper, and Pyro caught up to him.

"Where is she? What are you doing?"

Scout turned around, pointing over a shoulder with his thumb. "Yeah, looks like she went flying off of here and fell through. I don't know if the ground, ceiling, thing down there will hold us and it sounds like there's a river or something running under there."

Sniper moved to the edge to kneel down, tipping his hat back to smear sweat and blood off his forehead. "Then if she took a leap off here, where'd the robot go?"

"Dunno, only tracks I saw were the ones that led to here. No sign of her or the robot."

Spy, silent until now, moved to the edge to look down as well. "If memory serves, the lake above us is fed by a spring, and this area is dotted with caverns as well as the closed mine shafts."

"You think that's part of the spring below us?"

"A distributary of it, perhaps."

Sniper growled, standing. "This day just keeps getting better and better..." He began to jog along the wall's edge. "We need a way down, and a way inside."

"I'm on it," Scout said, rushing off ahead of them.

"Pyro, you have flares on you right?"

The masked male muttered something that sounded confirming, and patted a metal case strapped to his belt at his lower back.

"Good. When we find a way down I want you to fire one off to let the others know where we are."

Spy jogged along in Sniper's wake. "We should hurry...I do not count Miss MacKenna's chances of survival to be very high the longer it takes us to find her."

"You don't think I know that?" Sniper spat out. "It doesn't matter. We're going to find her, blast the robot apart, and then go hunting down the wanker that wants her dead."

Behind him Spy smiled briefly before his expression went grim again. Admittedly he had been thinking about Shiloh's chances of survival against the robot, but as they jogged along the wood and metal sheets that had been below them eventually ended in a heavy grate, the river roaring off a waterfall to disappear into the darkness below. 

"That sounds like quite a drop," Spy said quietly. "No doubt deeper into the mines."

Neither Sniper nor Pyro commented, the silence more than indicating at least Sniper's thoughts on the matter. 

The wall top they ran on began to slope downward and signs of the mining operation that had once been active here were coming into view, mainly in the form of old pipes, pulleys, rope, and poles stacked in haphazard piles and blackened with ages of soot and coal dust. There was, however, a single rickety structure in the distance, something much like an old barn or shed that, as they got closer, they could see stretched along part of the wall they were running on.

There were seven wide doors in the front of the structure, three of them having collapsed from rot and disuse, and out of one of the collapsed doorways came three sets of tracks that led up to a rusting, ancient tower with a system of pulleys and old conveyor belts still clinging to its skeleton and stretching high into the air. It seemed that minecarts would come up those tracks, offload their contents to the conveyor, and the conveyor belts would carry it up and dump it into the back of...well, most likely a waiting wagon or truck. 

There were no signs of power lines here, however - this place must have been closed before such things were commonly used. This was going to...be a headache.

Scout came out from one of the open doors, rushing up to meet them halfway. "It is super dark in there, no light switches or nothing. Didn't see a thing."

"But it's a way in," Spy interrupted. "Pyro, fire off a flare from here, if you would, and then light one for us to use inside."

With a muffled confirmation and even a quick salute, Pyro quickly shot a flare straight above their heads into the air, then popped the top on another and handed it, lit and burning, over to Sniper.

"Watch where you point that thrower," the Australian warned once they were stepping through the doorway into the mine building.

Everything in here was covered in dust and old; the flare's light revealed what looked like a staging area for the miners - there were old crates with helmets and candles, barrels of shovels and picks, discarded gloves and lanterns. There was a wall to their right with a dusty window and a door through which one could see a room similar to this one, just another place for miners to ready themselves for a day of work.

The room they were in right now however was the one with the iron tracks leading out of it; the metal glinted dully in the flare's light, guiding them back deeper into the room where they disappeared into a hole cut into the wall; Sniper ducked down and peered inside, an old minecart not six inches from the opening.

"Hey, over here." Built into the same wall as the minecart opening was a door; Scout wrenched on a doorknob that was nearly rusted stationary, finally yanking the door open to reveal what felt like a dark void.

Sniper stuck the hand holding the flare through the door; in its flickering light one could barely make out a chain fence in the darkness. He took a few steps into the room, raising the flare up to cast more light further in front of him; ahead of them was a metal fence around what looked like several elevators, three of which were smaller and were right at the end of the tracks. "...grab one of those lanterns, someone."

Scout plucked one of them off a crate and held it up. "Here, but it's pretty damn useless empty."

"Not what I wanted it for. Hold this." He handed the flare off to Spy to free up his hands, then slid open a side of the lantern and began prying at the part that held the wick, twisting and yanking until it came free; he tossed it aside and then took the flare back, sticking its end down into the empty oil chamber. It was slightly too tall and could rattle around, but when he slid the glass door shut and closed the shutters on two sides it cast a more directed beam of light.

He swung the lantern around to cast the beam of light around at the elevators ahead of them, ignoring the three small ones and moving toward the larger ones - there were two of those, ones obviously meant to carry groups of miners down into the mines. One was up here, locked in place and with the gate across the door shut, and the other had to be down below - Sniper could make out the dusty ropes and chains that no doubt hauled the thing up and down as needed.

"You think these things still work?" Scout asked, his voice echoing in the room.

"Work? Possibly. As to how we will get them to work, well...I am open to ideas, gentlemen," Spy answered, hands clasped behind his back. "I see no manner of powering these machines."

"Then we don't," Sniper grunted. He hooked the lantern to his belt and jogged over to the ropes and chains that, presumably, were connected to the elevator that was down in the darkness out of view; they seemed solid enough when he yanked on them so he grabbed hold and swung himself to them, wrapping hands around the ropes and beginning to partly slide, partly climb down.

"...you're not serious. You are not freaking serious."

Hand over hand, relying on his legs and feet to keep him from sliding, Sniper continued inching down. He paused just before he dropped below the platform, looking up at them. "Stay up here then, bunch of bloody cowards." With that he kept climbing down, out of their sight.

Spy leaned over the edge to watch his silhouette growing more distant. "Pyro, would you give me another flare or two?" When the other complied and handed them over, Spy tucked them inside his jacket and reached out to test his grip against the rope - it was dusty and rough but solid. "I have a feeling I may regret this, but we have a job to do gentlemen."

Scout and Pyro were barely visible now as the light from the lantern grew even further away. "Do you even know how to climb?"

Spy sniffed. "Not particularly, but I am very familiar with rope. Coming?"

With that Spy began to carefully inch down the rope in Sniper's wake, leaving Pyro and Scout to stare at one another in the darkness.

"Can YOU climb?"

Pyro's shrug could hardly be seen. Scout leaned to look over the edge at the dwindling light source and the shadows of Sniper and Spy. "...this is so freaking stupid. Light another one of those flare things up, I'm going to get another lantern. If I'm going to fall down a mineshaft I want to see my face crack into the damn floor."


	21. Ch 21 - Watch the Drop

The water slapping against the wheel and rushing over the waterfall at least masked the small splash she made as she slipped between the slats and dunked herself back into the frothy mess on the far side of the wheel; the robot's lone light beam was beginning to creep closer to the river and Shiloh had no real idea how the cloaking watch she had functioned - did it somehow hide her shadow too? 

She kept her hands on the wheel, moving them with its movement to keep her head above water; maybe if she stayed in the water here at the wheel, with it between her and that robot, neither a shadow nor ripples would be noticeable.

Her eyes tracked the movement of the light as it came nearer, the robot gradually sweeping it from side to side as it moved about; she watched as it methodically searched among the machines near the elevators, watched as it searched the elevators themselves as well as the nooks and crannies near them.

Quickly she sucked in a breath and hit the watch in the same instant as the light fell over the wheel, struggling to remain above water as well as in place without causing too many ripples of her own, eyes squinting at the brightness as she prayed that the robot would move on before the cloak ran out.

And...to her amazement, the light abruptly swung away from her, turning back toward the elevators. Shiloh blinked rapidly as brilliant afterimages swam in her vision. Something near the elevators had caught the robot's attention...but what? What else could possibly be down here besides her and it?

She ground the heel of a palm into her eyes, mentally trying to will the afterimages away so she could clearly see; minutes ticked away, the robot's attention remained on the elevators, and Shiloh's vision remained partially obscured. 

These stupid afterimages were almost in her direct range of view, hardly ideal, but she needed to try and spot what held that robot's attention so thoroughly. Shiloh slipped into the middle of the wheel again and shuffled along, focusing her eyes above and to the left of the elevators; this took the afterimages out of the way, though seeing strictly through peripheral vision was...tricky, but not impossible. In the ambient light from the robot she could see that one of the elevators had a chain-link cage wrapped around the support poles that stretched up into darkness, presumably up to whatever mechanism lifted it. 

The part of it that held passengers was made of dark wood and what she assumed was more metal, and while she couldn't gauge how wide or deep it was it looked maybe eight, nine foot tall - it was basically a box on a chain. Its front was left open with no door that she could see and barely, just barely, through the cage above she could see the faintest sign of a reddish light that was gradually growing brighter the longer she looked. 

Oh hell...was someone coming down here?

Her first thought was of the mercenaries - they would definitely be looking to retrieve her, and she hadn't been exactly subtle about her sprint down the hill. Maybe they'd followed and seen where she'd crashed through to the stupid river, but...

She blinked rapidly a few times, the afterimages finally fading enough that she risked looking at the elevators directly. Beside the elevator that was down here with them, the one that had the light coming toward it, she could see an empty caged platform identical to the one the present elevator sat on - clearly there was meant to be two elevators to carry passengers, just this second one must be up out of her view or maybe had been taken apart like the machinery that moved them.

The one that the source of light was descending on was the one that was already down here, and...if there was a chain-link cage, and presumably a solid ceiling that person was going to land on...

That robot would see them and they wouldn't have any way to escape it. And what if that wasn't one of the mercenaries? It would be pretty unlikely but that could just as easily be some property caretaker, or maybe even some idiots from the lake resort. Whoever it was would be a sitting duck in that cage.

...mercenary or innocent, she couldn't in good conscience let that happen. She had a rifle that may not work, the strap that held it to her back, a knife in her pocket, the watch on her wrist, and...well, that was it. Surely there was something she could do to warn whoever it was coming down while not getting herself caught. Think, think, think...

\------------------------------------------

His arms were beginning to burn with exertion when he noticed there was a light source coming up the shaft he was climbing down; it was white, and backlit some sort of rectangular shape below him - the top of the elevator, Sniper assumed - so he knew that he was both getting close to the bottom and also that damned robot no doubt knew he was coming.

Well, he could hardly stop now - there wouldn't be any climbing up, not with the others on the ropes and chain above him. His best bet would be trying to silently land on top of the elevator below him, maybe keep the robot from realizing he'd touched down until after he'd already shot it.

Then, the light disappeared as, echoing up the shaft, he heard a shout-

"-hey, HEY, you mobile wastebin! Want to play a game of hide and seek?"

"Damn it sheila, what the bloody hell are you doing?" he growled. At least he knew she was alive, but-

Well, so much for getting down quietly...or slowly. Sniper angled his feet to trap the rope in the little space between the flat of his foot and the heel of his boot, then began to slide fairly quickly down the rope - as fast as he could manage without toppling off.

The lantern didn't give off much light in a downward direction so when he could actually see the top of the elevator he decided he was close enough to drop down without injury, then immediately regretted that decision when he dropped down onto and then crashed through the dry-rotted boards of the elevator's roof. With a loud grunt he landed and stumbled against the inner wall of the elevator in a shower of splinters and sawdust, and staggered to get out the door to assess what he'd just fallen into.

To his left and right were the other elevators, to his far right was a collection of machinery he could just barely see in the light from his flare, and there was a river rushing by somewhere beyond that - he couldn't see it but he could definitely hear it.

Across from him was a wide, empty area, visible from the light from the lantern and also... He unhooked the lantern and then had his rifle up and trained on the robot as it turned around to face him, one eye lit up like a flashlight, standing maybe twenty feet from him.

"All right, bolt head, where is she?"

"That is a marvelous question. I do hope she doesn't drown as I am not sure where she went after she jumped." Slowly the robot turned, Sniper squinting in the light as it trained that eye on him. "Perhaps hearing you scream will be enough to draw her out if she's still lurking somewhere...torture is such nasty business but one must do what one must do, hmm?"

"You've got that right," he growled, training his sights on that eye and firing.

\----------------------------------

It had been one heck of a juggling act - she'd managed to unhook the strap entirely from the rifle, without dropping either, and gotten the strap tied to two of her belt loops on the back of her pants. She'd adjusted it to be as long as it could be, then looped it through the slats on the wheel and let it carry her up; when she was out of the water but not at the top of the wheel, she'd clicked the laser sight on, set it squarely on the back of the robot's head, then pulled trigger.

And...much as she'd been expecting, nothing happened beyond hearing a muffled click.

All right, on to plan B.

"Hey, HEY, you mobile wastebin! Want to play a game of hide and seek?"

She squinted as the robot's light immediately swung toward her, knowing she'd have afterimages again, but as she crested the top of the wheel's arc she sucked in a breath and jumped with one hand tightly gripping the strap attached to the back of her pants. As she went under she was forced to drop the rifle, then hit the watch on her wrist and let the wheel drag her around. 

When it began to tug her back up she freed the strap's end from the slats and then looped an arm through them instead, using her other hand to untie the strap from her belt loops. With a death grip on the strap she waited to be lifted higher up, then flailed somewhat blindly until she slapped into the central arm that supported the wheel; she flipped a free end of the strap over it, grabbed on, and then swung herself off the wheel, using the strap to keep the current from washing her away.

She had to constantly jerk her arms back and forth to keep the strap centered on the turning arm and to also propel herself forward as swimming was out of the question in this current, but inch by inch she got closer to the shore; from the elevators she heard a crash and the sound of splintering wood, and then a reddish light came swinging out of the darkness.

"All right, bolt head, where is she?"

She grit her teeth and tried to pick up her pace while the robot was distracted - that was Mundy. They'd come down here to find her, like she knew they would.

At last her knees slammed against a rocky but solid river bottom, and she stood to slog the last few feet onto dry ground, keeping hold of the strap once she'd unwrapped it from the arm - she had no idea what else she could do with it, but maybe it'd still be useful somehow.

Over the rush of the water she could just barely hear the robot and Mundy speaking; Shiloh took a few steps and then threw herself into a roll behind the mess of machinery, panting and shivering as she took a moment to decide her next move. She...probably should have planned further along than 'shout to get its attention, then get out of the river.'

\-----------------------------------------------

The robot had ducked his first shot and then rushed him; Sniper dodged to the side and then ducked himself as the robot swung a fist. There was a clatter from within the elevator before a second flare bounced into view and rolled between the two of them but he hardly spared it a glance as he began to dodge and sidestep a flurry of blows aimed at him.

"If you call this torture I think you need your programming looked at."

He stopped a blow with the stock of his rifle and swung back in kind, forcing the robot back a few steps.

"I merely need you to make noise, my dear man."

"All right, here's some noise - WATCH THE DROP!" he shouted toward the elevator before throwing himself into a sideways roll to avoid a kick, coming up on one knee with his gun tracking.

\---------------------------------------------

Spy had wondered what that crash below had been and, even though it was difficult, he paused to light a flare and let it drop; it lit up the hole as it fell through it, giving Spy a clear view of what he was about to lower himself down onto even as Sniper shouted a warning up to him.

The flare had rolled out of his sight but it cast enough light for the Frenchman to drop lightly through the hole and activate his cloak before he darted out the door; there were the other elevators here, and some machinery, but...no other cover. That could prove a problem if that robot had any sort of projectile weapons.

Spy put a hand on his sapper - it would be the best defense against any weapon usage on the robot's part, providing Spy could get close enough, and as he watched the elaborate dance between Sniper and the robot he considered how high his chances were for being struck by a blow not intended for him.

...they would be fairly high, but he didn't have a choice did he?

He drew his revolver with his free hand, checked the time remaining on his cloak, and attempted to creep closer as he heard two successive thuds in the elevator behind him.

\------------------------------------------

Flagship marked the sound of two more dropping through the elevator and would have lamented its loss of an eye if it possessed the programming necessary for such an emotion. As such, it was more annoyed than anything else as it had to quickly turn its head to assess what new threats were approaching, noting that it was the skinny little male it had sent flying before and also a strange masked individual that had a-

Flagship's feet kicked up sparks on the ground in its haste to get clear as the masked one's weapon spewed a gout of flame at it. So this was the one that had set it on fire earlier...well, it certainly didn't need any other fused vents or further damage to its cooling systems, that one would need to be dealt with, quickly.

Admittedly, the tiny one's gun had the power behind it to dent and penetrate its armoring; Flagship ordered the males as the flame-spewing one at top priority, followed by the small one, followed by the man with the rifle. Yes...deal with the biggest threat first.

As it leaped for the masked male there was a sudden blast of an invisible force against its chest, enough that the robot's forward momentum was actually halted, and a follow-up blast sent it sliding backward a few inches. It would seem the male's weapon could do more than spout flame, which Flagship immediately moved out of as the invisible blasts were followed by a tongue of fire.

It assessed its internal damage and power levels again - it was already beyond the point of being able to return home on its own, it would need to send up an extraction signal at some point...and since there was no reason to conserve power any longer... It prepped a charge and squared itself to its attacker.

With a burst of rocket propulsion Flagship rushed the flame-wielder, the momentum and force of the rocket pulse overcoming the compressed air blast from the male's weapon and allowing the robot to close the distance to grapple him. There was a crackle of energies moments before the robot discharged a disabling electrical blast...only to have the male shake it off with a muffled giggle.

That was odd. What exactly what that male's suit made of? Flagship clamped hands on the flamethrower in the other's hands, twisting and wrenching until it tore the weapon from his grasp and tossed it aside before reaching to seize the male by the forearm. As it tightened to a bone-crunching grip the male reached to grab something strapped to its back, then swung an overhead chop at Flagship's shoulder joint - a wickedly sharp axe slammed into the armored plating and scraped off at an angle, but the blow was enough to dent the metal that bordered the shoulder socket.

A few rifle shots slammed into the robot then, still doing little more than denting its armor further but the scrawny male had managed to get behind it as well and was peppering its back with shot after shot, no doubt as fast as the male could pull the trigger.

"Nasty little things," Flagship muttered, tugging to drag the fire-wielding male in close to negate the axe's usefulness while prepping another blast.

Rotating at its hip socket Flagship spun in a complete 360, blasting the scrawny one with the electricity and tossing the other like a discus back toward the stairs that led down to the other level. The scrawny man dropped at its feet; Flagship lifted a foot to crush the male's head before freezing in place as a rogue current suddenly zapped it. Alarms began to beep as already strained levels of power began to drop even further - it was that damned skinny one, the one that had strapped some sort of odd device on it at the base.

Shuddering Flagship swung an arm blindly behind it and felt it connect; it ponderously turned even as it tried to get its hands behind it to seize the device from its back, rifle shots plinking into its body and also beginning to penetrate. The armored plating on its back had taken too much of a beating...Flagship would need to take things head on for now lest a bullet punch through something vital.

But first this...damned...device on its...back...


	22. Ch 22 - Reckless and Stupid

Spy grunted and staggered back a few steps as the robot swung backward and managed to slam a fist into the base of his ribcage at his side. The sapper was secure and almost dead center in the robot's back, placed purposely to be hopefully out of the robot's easy reach...after all, the damn thing had pulled the sapper free once before. He couldn't be certain how it was able to resist the sapper in the first place but maybe if it just stayed on long enough -

From over his shoulder somewhere he heard Sniper dropping empty casings to the ground moments before he heard the familiar clicking of a new round being loaded. With the combined fire power of himself, Sniper's rifle, Scout's scattergun, and Pyro's flamethrower, one would think they would have destroyed this thing by now... He quickly stepped aside and leveled his revolver at the robot as it began to slowly turn around, moving jerkily and trying to reach the sapper. Spy shot once, twice, and frowned as he noted no new holes forming...what was this blasted thing made of? He was greatly looking forward to seeing it fall over.

As he shot two more rounds at it, Sniper continuing to fire as well, the robot ceased trying to turn to face them and instead began to put its back to them again. Odd...maybe the sapper was actually working this time-

No, no. It wasn't the sapper.

Spy's eyes widened and he scrambled to get out of the way as the rockets on the robot's lower legs suddenly came to life and sent the robot screeching toward him. A dive that turned into a roll carried him safely out of the robot's path and he growled when he heard the crunching impact of the robot meeting the wall, punctuated by a rain of shattered sapper parts.

And also lit by a flare of blue-white arcing electricity.

"Merd-"

From his nearly prone position he almost managed to dodge the entirety of the blast, being clipped at the shins, paralyzing spasms moving up his legs that left him to fall in a heap on the floor; there was a flurry of footsteps as Sniper took off running, the robot chasing him briefly before skidding to a halt and turning back toward Spy. Spy tried to stand and found his legs unresponsive and twitching uncontrollably.

Well, this was certainly not ideal. In desperation he began to roll to put any distance he could between himself and the bot...only to pause when the robot moved beyond him to pick up Pyro's dropped flamethrower. 

Between being incinerated or crushed to death he would prefer the latter, much like Scout had come close to being - and actually, where was Scout? Spy rolled onto his back to retrieve the last flare he carried from within his jacket - the one in Sniper's lantern had burned out only minutes earlier - and, though it took a few tries, he lit it and sent it rolling across the floor; Scout was dragging himself across the ground toward the mess of machinery near the elevators. The boy was likely still feeling effects from the entire blast he'd taken earlier...he would be of no help.

And Pyro... Pyro had fallen out of sight when the robot had thrown him. 

However...over where Scout had been hit, Spy could just make out the shape of what he assumed to be his scattergun laying discarded on the ground. Spy gave his revolver a look before tucking it back into his jacket, cloaking, and beginning to drag himself toward the scattergun.

Halfway there a foot came out of the darkness to slam onto his right forearm, halting him and then grinding painfully into the limb. Spy looked up to see the robot looming over him as his cloak fell away.

"A lucky guess."

"Indeed it was. And goodbye," the robot said, in that annoyingly cheerful singsong voice it had.

Simultaneously he tried to roll while trying to tug his arm free as the thrower's business end was swung into his face...

\-------------------------------------------

The thought of being a damsel in distress really bugged her and coupled with the thought that any one of these men could die as a result of this stupid mess made her grind her teeth...but any thoughts of heroism were immediately squashed by the solemn reminder that she had no applicable skills for this sort of situation, and even if she did she had the equivalent of a pocketknife on her and that was it, leaving her to remain hunched and hidden behind the machinery as a silent observer to the fight going on not twelve feet from her.

Whatever was inside the lantern that Sniper had set down near the elevators was beginning to sputter and die; she glanced around, trying to find something, anything, in her general area that might actually help turn the situation around in their favor.

'Something, something...give me something...' She again squinted in the dying light and finally saw something that might be of some use - piled in a heap against the first of the small elevators was a bunch of junk, mainly tarps and old rope from what she could tell from a glance, but she could just barely see what looked like a handle sticking out from the mess. Crawling on hands and knees to stay low, she grabbed it and tugged until she finally yanked a broken pickaxe free - there was a large chunk taken out of the flatter chisel-like end of the head, and the pointy end was blunted and bent, but...it was heavy, it was something. Now what the hell could she hope to do with it?

Her attention was drawn back to the fight as the robot spun, sending Pyro flying and Scout crashing to the floor as he was electrocuted.

...all right, no more hiding - if these men died here she'd be quick to follow, and she'd done ok winging it so far.

She gripped the broken pickaxe and activated the cloaker on her wrist before slipping out from behind the machinery, skirting the edge of the river and circling around to try and see where Pyro had fallen. Now that she was over in this area she could see how that robot had appeared to just rise out of nowhere - there was a very steep hill here, almost a sheer drop off, with a set of stairs carved into the rock itself with old iron poles pounded in to provide a half-assed handrail that was missing the chain guides in several places. She couldn't quite see where the stairs ended in the dim light from a flare that had rolled near, but she could at least see where Pyro had gotten to.

He was braced, upside down, against one of the poles without a chain connecting it to the next one; he was struggling to try and lift himself off the pole, but with the angle he was hanging at coupled with whatever part of him was stuck, he couldn't get himself up high enough to get loose.

Shiloh clicked off the cloak and groped her way down the stairs to him, one hand grabbing him by the belt while the other grabbed him by the shoulder. He stopped flailing long enough to mumble something at her before bracing a hand against the ground and trying to hook a leg over her shoulder; she bent down to let him get his leg in place, then stood and lifted as he pushed, the two of them both almost toppling down the stairs as he suddenly came free.

He flopped down on the stairs, mumbling and grumbling, as Shiloh righted herself from where she'd fallen sideways into a chain between two poles. "Can you move?"

He nodded with a muffled affirmative, then began to look around; with a triumphant huh-huh! noise Pyro hurried down a few of the steps and picked up his axe. Shiloh smiled a bit at that and then looked up the stairs.

"Let's go."

With Pyro on her heels Shiloh jogged up the stairs, stumbling a few times as she misjudged where the rough stairs were, and then she stood aside to let him in front of her as, to her horror, they had a clear view of the robot holding Pyro's flamethrower while standing over Spy.

Pyro let out an exasperated noise as he barreled toward the two, Shiloh gripping her pickaxe and hitting her cloak to follow in his wake. She circled to the left as Pyro went right, the male diving for and seizing the pilot light of the weapon and wrenching it free before standing up and letting out what sounded like an honest-to-God raspberry.

"You filthy little beast," she heard the robot snarl as she maneuvered herself behind it.

As the robot flung the useless flamethrower at its owner Shiloh slapped her cloak off and let out a piercing whistle as she hefted the pick in her hands; the robot spun to face her and she offered it a smile as swung the pickaxe at its head as hard as she could manage in an upward swing that caught it in the chin with the flattened end.

The force of the blow reverberated up her arms and her fingers involuntarily loosened, nearly dropping the pickaxe, but to her grim satisfaction the robot's metallic faceplate tore off and went sailing upward into the darkness to reveal a mess of wires and inner workings along with the single remaining glowing eye. 

Spy, who had been pinned to the ground by the robot's foot, pulled his arm free and shoved himself to his feet, staggering uneasily as he drew his revolver from his jacket and took aim; the robot covered its vulnerable face with its hands and shuffled backward as Spy fired twice, sending a few fingers falling sparking to the ground. Shiloh adjusted her grip and went in for another swing, trying to knock its arms away, and this time did lose her grip on the pickaxe as the robot swiped at her and sent it tumbling away.

A telltale crackle of blue began forming on one of the robot's arms and Shiloh was seized from behind by Spy even as Pyro came diving between her and the robot; as before the electricity dissipated harmlessly against his suit and he began hammering at the bot with his axe, raining down blows and forcing it to retreat step by step.

"Move it, mumbles!"

Spy and Shiloh turned in unison to see Scout stumbling toward them, his scattergun back in his hand as he tried to get uncooperative legs to carry him around to flank the robot. Pyro obligingly ducked to the side and Scout fired a total of three shots before all that came from his weapon was a few hollow clicks. "...aw crap, I'm out."

Shiloh wheezed as Spy's grip around her waist tightened. "But I am not," the Frenchman growled, emptying what rounds remained in his gun before the robot leaped into the air with its rockets firing.

"Initiating emergency extraction measures," it intoned. Its chest panel opened and something inside it whirred to life; Spy swung Shiloh down and away, then dove on top of her as a multitude of small objects began raining down around them.

With each object's impact there were several bangs and explosions of electrical energies - Spy had not gotten them nearly far enough away to escape their area of effect and Spy, Shiloh, and Scout suffered the full brunt of the paralyzing bombs. Pyro stood in their midst and swung his axe up at legs that were just out of his reach, howling in frustration.

From wherever Sniper had tucked himself there was a single shot from his rifle with one of the rockets on the robot's legs exploding an instant later and sending the bot into a spin, Pyro scrambling for cover as the robot also dropped in altitude and nearly took his head off.

"I have had enough! I will see you gentlemen later," the robot screeched as it clattered to the ground, then spun and used its single remaining rocket to propel itself toward the elevator.

It reached the elevator and then angled itself upward; there was a crack of shattering wood and then the sounds of the robot crashing off the sides of the shaft as it rocketed upward and out of sight.

\--------------------------------------------------

Sniper had been sheltering in the elevator to keep the robot from having a direct line of assault toward him, pausing to catch his breath and count how many bullets he had left...it was a depressingly small number, unfortunately. 

Goddamn bloody robot...and he had thought the armored Spybots had been a pain. What the hell was this one made of? They'd only just now started making headway against that damn armor, and here he was almost out of ammo.

He stuck his head out and lifted his rifle, pausing when he took in the sight of Spy pinned with Pyro's flame thrower in his face. His finger tightened on the trigger but he then jerked to the side and sent the shot flying wide as Pyro went charging in, watching as the male yanked the pilot light off the weapon and then taunted the robot with it.

He shook his head at the antics, then froze when a shape appeared from thin air behind the robot with a loud whistle. "-goddamn stupid -" The rest of his curse went silent as he watched Shiloh wind up and nail the robot in the face with...something. Was that a pickaxe? Regardless, the robot's faceplate went flying off and then Pyro moved in to begin hammering at the bot.

"...good job, sheila," he muttered, taking aim again and waiting for a clear shot. With that plate gone and the robot's face lacking armor...

'Come on, come on you wanker...turn this way and give me a clear view of you.'

He grit his teeth and held off on shooting again as, even as Pyro moved out of the way, Scout stepped in between Sniper and the robot. "Damn it, you stupid bludgers, get out of the way-"

His swearing was momentarily interrupted as the robot suddenly came rocketing toward him after showering the others in what looked like miniature bombs; he pressed himself flat against the wall behind him, sucking in a breath and tensing, ready to spring away but instead was showered in wood as the bot burst upward through the ceiling and crashed its way up the shaft and out of sight.

"Are you bloody joking..." There was a loud clatter of metal on wood as then the ropes and chain they had climbed down came crashing down to land not far from where he was pressed against the wall. Great, their one way out of here...

Well, nothing he could do about it right this moment; he pushed himself away from the elevator's wall and stepped out, pausing to strap his rifle to his back and pick up the lantern again before chasing down the lone flare that Spy had rolled across the floor. He stuffed it into the lantern then rushed over to where Spy and Shiloh were laying in a heap in the floor, Shiloh face-down with Spy sprawled across her back.

Spy was still shaking and twitching involuntarily as Sniper seized him by the shoulders and pulled him up and off Shiloh, easing him into a cross-legged position where he then sat hunched over gritting his teeth.

"I could gladly go the rest of my life without ever suffering such an attack again," the Frenchman hissed through his teeth as Sniper moved to kneel beside Shiloh and roll her onto her back.

Her face was scrunched up in pain and she too was still twitching, very softly chanting 'ow ow ow' as he moved her. He lifted the lantern to give her a quick once over - if she was bleeding he couldn't tell, and it was far too dim to see anything like bruises. 

"Come on, come on - you don't get to do something stupid and reckless and then sit around afterward like a wuss." He gave her a tired smirk and set the lantern down, bending to slide an arm behind her shoulders to leverage her up.

"Call me a wuss again when I'm not recovering from getting the shit shocked out of me, see what happens," she growled, panting as she weakly tried to brace an arm behind her to keep herself upright after he'd gotten her sitting up.

Sniper moved behind her to give her something to lean against, looking over to where Pyro was sitting and humming merrily next to Scout who was curled up on his side holding his stomach. "You all right over there?"

"Yeah, I think I'm done for the day," came the pained response. "Feel like I'm freaking dying over here."

Spy inhaled and exhaled slowly, carefully sitting upright and rubbing his arms. "I can sympathize...that was not pleasant and you were struck with it twice." After a few further steadying breaths, he turned to fix Shiloh with a stare. "And you. As my colleague has already stated, that was an exceptionally reckless and stupid thing you did, Miss MacKenna."

"Was I just supposed to sit back and watch that thing fry you?"

"You are what it was after, exposing yourself was foolhardy."

"Saved your ass, though," Sniper said quietly, smirking at him when Spy glared. "Yeah it was dumb, but it worked. Nice swing by the way."

She turned her head enough to look up and back at him, still leaning against his leg. "Thanks...it hurt. A lot."

"Hey, yeah..." Scout tried to prop himself up on his elbow, groaning with the effort. "Took its damn face off. Didja see where it landed?"

She shook her head. "Wasn't important at the time."

They all went silent as Pyro hopped to his feet and went skipping off into the darkness, leaving everyone to stare at each other, an unspoken 'now what?' hanging in the air.

Finally, Scout voiced it. "So, what now?"

"Well," Sniper sighed, wiping the back of a hand across his face. He was sweating and while some of the cuts from the door that'd exploded in his face had clotted up and closed over, some of the others were oozing and stinging. "When it got to the top that damned robot cut the chain."

Spy let out a sigh that was more growl than anything else. "You are saying we are trapped down here?"

"Unless we can get that machinery working again and get that other elevator down here, we're stuck."

Shiloh shifted and finally leaned forward, rubbing her face with her hands. "Maybe I can make it up-"

Spy, Sniper, and Scout together all but shouted "No!" at her mid-sentence.

Spy actually seemed livid at the thought. "Absolutely not," he snapped. "I think you have risked yourself more than enough for one day."

Sniper gave her a rough pat on the shoulder, prompting a pained grunt from the woman. "The others were following us down, they should be smart enough to figure out we're down here."

"I hope Medic's with them and he doesn't skimp on the healing again," Scout groaned, laying back down flat on his back. "I'm just...gonna lay down here, for a minute."

Shiloh jerked back into Sniper's leg as Pyro came skipping back up to them and thrust the handle of the pickaxe into her face; when she didn't immediately take it he wiggled it at her, saying something as he did but as usual all she could hear were mumbles. "Uh...thanks..." She took it and dropped it to the floor beside her; satisfied, Pyro skipped back over to sit down by Scout again, rocking back and forth and humming happily.

After a few moments more Shiloh shifted herself around, away from Sniper, so that the three of them formed a little circle around the lantern. "...how many of those do we have left?"

"Not many, I would wager," Spy answered. He slowly rotated his neck, then looked toward the elevators. "If anything we do have Pyro's flame thrower, as well as a small amount of salvageable wood."

Sniper chuckled quietly, brushing fingers against his pantsleg where he'd gotten wet from Shiloh leaning on him. "Not afraid of the dark, are you?"

She gave him an annoyed look. "The dark? No. Crazy killer robots that might be hiding in it? Yes."

He eased himself down to sit, pulling his rifle around to rest it across his lap. "At least down here we'll hear them before they can ambush us." He glanced in the general direction of the river then. "...maybe."

Shiloh shook her head, smiling a bit, rubbing her arms, then hissed loudly and jerked a hand away; Sniper and Spy both looked up sharply.

"What?"

"Ow, I - Oh for the love of..."

Shiloh reached out to tug the lantern closer, holding her arm out to reveal the blackened remains of the cloaking watch on her wrist; it was partially melted and had stuck to her skin, blistering it. She carefully picked at the clasp until it came apart, then peeled it from her wrist to reveal raw and burnt skin.

Spy's brow furrowed and he pulled his jacket sleeve up; sure enough his own cloaking device was also burnt and the skin blistered. "Damn. I wonder what it says about a man's pain tolerance that he does not notice metal fused to his arm."

"Considering you were just electrocuted I'd chalk it up to being distracted by more important things," Sniper commented dryly.

Spy grunted, tossing the useless, shorted-out cloaker away. "Unfortunate to have lost my cloak and my sapper both in the same battle."

Shiloh eyed the watch a moment before letting the ruined device fall to the ground by the lantern, then moved to lay down and curl into a ball. "I hurt, I'm wet, and I'm cold. I might need that fire sooner rather than later."

Spy carefully slipped his jacket off, wincing at each movement, then tossed it to her. "Here - let us hope it will not take the others long."

\-----------------------------------------------

Flagship's balancing systems were redlining as it rocketed up through the mineshaft, bouncing off the walls when it over-corrected too far in any direction. When it reached the top of the shaft it crashed into a pulley system and became momentarily hung up in the ropes and chain there, finally using a brute force method to snap everything free and let it drop.

Its final rocket sputtered and went silent as Flagship's feet touched solid ground, the robot staggering from the elevators and heading toward a light source it could detect ahead of it. The forceful removal of its faceplate had damaged its final optical sensor, leaving its visuals blurred and dim - Flagship was reasonably certain that, since it was now on the surface, the light source it was detecting was sunlight. It needed to get to an open area to broadcast its signal for immediate retrieval, before its power cells died entirely...

It stepped to the doorway of the old wooden building these elevators were housed in, then scanned ahead of it - piles of abandoned building materials, hard-packed dirt area, old iron rails leading out from the mines.

No hostiles in sight.

It was difficult to open the panel in its arm when it was missing fingers on the hand that had to perform such a function, but with a bit of fumbling Flagship pried the panel open and reached in to remove what looked like a slender remote with its only features being a series of color-coded buttons on its face.

Flagship stepped out of the doorway and moved toward the center of the clear area ahead, remote grasped in one hand as it began punching in a sequence: [DAMAGE CRITICAL. POWER CRITICAL. UNIT FAILURE IMMINENT. IMMEDIATE RETRIEVAL REQUIRED. COORDINATES FOLLOWING.]

It was quite possibly the most dire sequence Flagship could broadcast...it would not doubt send brother into a panic-

It froze in place as it heard the familiar sound of a shotgun being pumped behind it.

Slowly it turned, its failing gaze falling on a helmeted male in overalls, the business end of the aforementioned shotgun leveled at it and a sort of disarming smile on his face.

"Howdy...howabout you, me, and my associates here have a quick chat."

Flagship's threat detection noted three other humans stepping out from where they'd hidden themselves around the doorways of the other openings into the wooden mining building, though Flagship's own attention was riveted on the weapon leveled at it - it was strange, seemingly cobbled together from random parts with a wide-screened scope that glowed a soft green on the end facing the robot. 

It swiveled its head to regard the other three - one had a rocket launcher resting on his shoulder, one had a weapon with a large-barreled cylinder, and the other had a gun attached to a pack strapped to his back. A Soldier, a Demoman, a Medic, and...judging by the helmet, an Engineer, all of the human variety.

The Engineer, still smiling, tilted his head to quickly glance to the Soldier on his left. "Looks like the others already did a number on it... Try to keep it intact the best you can, I want to see what makes it tick."

"I promise nothing," the Soldier said with a feral smile.

Flagship added a final sequence to its message before crushing the remote in its hand. [PLEASE HURRY.]


	23. Ch 23 - Erased

They did eventually gather up the busted remains of the wooden ceiling to build a little fire to sit around after the last of Pyro's flares had burnt out, deciding that they wanted a light source to accompany the sounds of a fight echoing down the elevator shaft - Spy had quietly commented that they would know who won, robot or mercenary, by who came down the shaft to collect them.

And they would need to be collected as they had discovered - 'they' being Spy, Sniper, and Pyro - that the machinery down here had been partially disassembled and whatever bits were needed to connect everything back up to the water wheel to power the elevators were no longer down here; there was really only the pile of junk Shiloh had dragged her pickaxe out of, and from that pile they'd pulled free a few old tarps to sit on so they wouldn't be sitting directly on the chilled stone.

Next to the fire, with Spy's jacket over her shoulders, Shiloh found the temperature down here at least tolerable though she could do without the wet clothing. Scout was curled up on his side next to her, stretching and grumbling every so often about cramping muscles; she could relate - both her and Spy were also suffering periodic spasms, a lingering side effect from having been shocked earlier. 

After one particularly painful seizing up of the muscles in her neck and shoulder blades Shiloh found herself mirroring Scout, stretching out on her side after nudging Pyro until he scooted over enough to allow it. "When this is over I'm running back into the woods and the most mechanically advanced thing I want to see is a folding pocket knife."

This drew a few chuckles from the others, with Sniper glancing over at her. "What about your little crossbow?"

"So help me I will downgrade to a stick and string...maybe even a spear."

He shook his head, still chuckling, then shifted to look back toward the elevators. "...it got quiet up there."

"They had best not take forever getting down here," Spy muttered, flinching and grunting at another spasm. "I am discovering I am not overly fond of caverns."

Shiloh tugged his jacket in closer around her shoulders. "Try being washed down a river into one."

"I think that would merely make me hydrophobic."

They went quiet again, seated around the fire with nothing to do but wait. Into the silence came a yell from above and eventually, after a shouted conversation between him and Sniper Engineer came down the shaft, tied into a makeshift rope harness and presumably being lowered down by the others that were still topside. It didn't take the man long to determine there wasn't any feasible way to connect up the machinery to get the elevators moving.

"Well hell, we could have told you that," Sniper said dryly into the silence that followed.

Engineer laughed a bit. "You could have but I would have checked myself anyway. At any rate, it's not like you're all stuck down here - I'll climb back up and see about getting one of these smaller ones hooked to some rope and pulleys, we'll just use some good old fashioned man-power to get you all back above ground."

With a semblance of a plan in place time seemed to speed up a bit until finally they were emerging from the old mining building and out into the early evening light. Medic and Soldier were waiting just outside the doorway leaning against the wall, Medic seemingly tending to the other male; the outer area was pitted with craters and debris, a clear sign of the fight they'd heard going on while they'd been trapped down in the mine.

"Hello there. I got electrocuted again," was Soldier's greeting as they approached, accompanied by a thumb's up.

Medic rolled his eyes and silently gestured for them all to come over; Spy, Shiloh, and Scout were all quickly looked over and given some treatment with the medigun, Scout complaining loudly when, according to him, Medic again skimped on mending.

"Silence, schweinhund!" the German finally snapped, interrupting the younger man's grumbling tirade. "It may have escaped your notice but I have no manner of recharging the pack here at this base. I am conserving energies for serious injury, cease your complaints before I give you pain to truly complain about."

"Aye lad, you can handle limping for a few hours. No one wants to hear your whines."

Scout gave Demoman a withering look but remained silent, moodily hunching against the wall as Medic straightened and gave the rest of them a firm nod. "We should be going. Quickly."

"What happened up here?" Sniper asked, eying the craters. "Did you get it?"

"We got it," Engineer repeated with a nod. "Demo and Soldier here did a pretty good number on it, and then I got a turn in." He swung the oddly cobbled together shotgun off his back and into his hands, showing it to the Australian. "While I was waiting on those programs to pull what they could out of those Spybot heads, I whipped this little number up - fires darts similar to what I gave Spy back at home base. With its armor blown off I was able to get some clear shots in at the innards, disabled quite a few things and we've got some souvenirs that should prove useful."

"Not to interrupt, but I agree with our Medic here - we should be going," Spy interjected. "There's no telling what else may be headed our way. Where is Heavy?"

"He's back at base with Miss Pauling, packing up so we can make a quick getaway. Pyro, grab that would you-" Engineer pointed to a pile of robotic remains piled on a tarp in one of the doorways "-and let's get back to base and then out of here. And I don't care what Miss Pauling or the Administrator say, we're heading somewhere that's got a proper workshop even if we have to dismantle a robot army to get there." 

"I would look forward to that," Soldier commented, pushing himself to his feet and coming over to give Shiloh a rough slap on the shoulder. "Occupied base or not we still have MacKenna. It would almost be guaranteed we're going to run into something with her with us."

Shiloh arched her back and hissed through her teeth at the blow. "Do not do that again..."

Engineer moved over to help Pyro tie up the tarp that was filled with Flagship's remains. "Oh, I know Soldier, I'm looking forward to it too, providing I get some time in a workshop first. I've got some...fairly nasty ideas I'd like to spring on these tin cans, if Spy and Medic are willing to lend a hand."

Medic delicately plucked his glasses from his nose, wiping them clean on his sleeve before grinning in what could only be described as a sinister manner. "Oh, I do love nasty ideas."

Spy seemed less thrilled with the idea. "What did you have in mind, Engineer? I have already lost many of my tools of trade."

"You'll see, but I think you'll like it."

\----------------------------------------------

It was dark when they'd climbed back up the mountain, finding Heavy alone but with the items Engineer had wanted packed into the back of the truck they'd initially arrived in, leaving the one Spy and the others had driven here open for passenger transportation.

As they performed one last sweep of the base to make certain they'd collected everything they could, Engineer cornered Sniper in the stairwell. "Right, that reminds me, here-"

Sniper blinked as a small ring of keys were shoved into his hands. "...you've got to be kidding me, you actually brought it with you?" He couldn't help it, he actually smiled - these were the keys to his camper, something he'd figured would be a royal pain to retrieve from their supposedly dismantled base.

Engineer flashed him that toothy grin of his. "We packed the one truck with junk and needed something else to ride in since we were a bit short on passenger space, and since you left your keys in it I figured you wouldn't mind us using it if we ended up getting it back to you in one piece."

"I didn't even see it parked up there."

"It's outside on the other side of the barn, couldn't bring it in since Medic and I needed some room to work. Wasn't too bad getting it out of the garage back at the base - the ones near the front door got wrecked in the fighting but everything in the back was fine. Should at least make our ride to our next destination less cramped."

Sniper clapped a hand on the other male's shoulder and gave it a few pats. "Thanks, mate. I really appreciate you getting it out of there."

"Well, don't thank me yet - the driver's side window got busted, so we got it back here in almost one piece."

"Hell, mate, I can handle a broken window. Thanks, really."

Engineer touched two fingers to his hardhat in a sort of acknowledging salute, then led the way up the stairs, turning his head to talk over his shoulder. "Heavy didn't say anything about Pauling or the Administrator picking our destination, and I can't think of anywhere nearby we've been that Blu hasn't been... I'm thinking our best bet is going to be picking somewhere we can easily defend and just mowing our way in. It'll be rough going if THEY'VE prepared for a siege, but I doubt they'd expect us to make that move."

Sniper mulled that over a moment. "Assuming every base of ours is occupied we'd be mowing our way in regardless."

Engineer shrugged. "We have to assume the worst, if you ask me. I'm not looking forward to prying those damn things out of our bases but if we have to...well, we should dig in and prepare for a possible siege, and hang tight until I can get a few things put together and see what I can get out of our latest trophy kill."

They came up the stairs and into the disguised barn area, where the rest of their team were milling around the two trucks parked inside, one of which was packed solidly with crates of supplies and robot remnants.

Engineer tugged his glove off and flexed his fingers, wiping sweat off onto his overalls. "At any rate, they're going to find us wherever we go. I was trying to be careful but if I was a gambling man I'd put good money on there being something in our piles of scrap here that tipped them off to where we were. Withstanding a siege is about our only option at this point, and I'd rather do it somewhere fortified than do it here."

"You're probably right...so, where'd you have in mind?"

With a gesture to everyone around Engineer brought them all over to one of the table's that had only earlier been covered in Spybot pieces, everyone crowding around behind him. On it was the map Medic had been marking out locations on previously, and Engineer picked up an eraser to quickly clear off the light pencil markings. "Well boys, what do you think?"

\---------------------------------------

Perched on the bumper of the empty truck Shiloh watched and listened to the men debate on where to go next. Her attention kept wandering to the door, a sort of paranoid need to make sure nothing else came rushing in to attack them; when Sniper tapped her on her shoulder she jumped and had to grab the edge of the bumper to keep herself from instinctively springing away.

Sniper smirked down at her. "Bit jumpy, are we?"

"Shut up, I'm tired and cranky," she muttered. "How's the debate going?"

"We'll be loading up shortly. Get up and come on, outside."

"Why?"

Sniper was already heading to the door, twirling a small set of keys around a fingertip and clicking a flashlight on. "Still wet, aren't you?"

"Well yeah, not much I can do about it though."

"I know you can't but I can, come on."

She finally slid off the bumper and headed out after him, turning and following him around to the back of the barn where there was a beat up and well-used camper van parked there in the shade. "What's this?"

"Home away from home when I'm not under contract," was the answer as he headed to the back. 

Shiloh rubbed fingers against mold that had taken hold on the side paneling of the camper, visible in the flashlight's illumination as dark splotches against the lighter coloration of the camper as Sniper had moved by. "You live in this? Really?"

He poked his head around the camper's side, frowning at her. "And what's that supposed to mean?"

She held up her hands in a conciliatory gesture. "Easy, not making fun of you or anything, I've just never seen one of these things before." She came around the back as Sniper unlocked the rear door, swinging it open to reveal its dim inside - there were a few tiny counters and cabinets, a very cramped and tiny kitchenette, and she could just make out where a three-rung ladder led up to a sleeping loft that sat above the cab of the truck beneath it. Though there was a stale smell of cigarette smoke and sweat to the camper, everything looked clean and well-organized.

Sniper stepped inside, bending a bit as he was just tall enough for his hat to brush the ceiling - and, Shiloh thought privately, he was probably too tall for that tiny bed up there - and opening a cabinet to dig through it while Shiloh hovered awkwardly at the doorway looking in. Finally he pulled a few things free and tossed them at the floor near the door - a wrinkled but folded shirt and pants.

She stared at them a moment, then up at him. "What are those for?"

"Would you rather spend another six hours in wet clothing?" He shut the cabinet and came back out, stepping over the clothes and around Shiloh.

"Well, no..." She eyed the clothes again, then him. "Um...well, all right. I have to say this is the first innocent offering of 'wear my clothes' I've ever seen in my life."

He snorted, lifting his hat to scratch the top of his head. "Must have been a wild life you led in that club, then."

"My life was pretty tame actually. I didn't engage in that sort of behavior, I was just the errand girl." She picked the shirt and pants up. "Mind if I just change in here?"

"I thought that went without saying, unless you're wanting to give anyone who walks out here a peep show." 

He offered her the flashlight and she took it, balancing it on top of the clothing she held before resting her free hand on the door frame, one leg raised to step inside. "Not rea- wait a minute." She fixed him with a look, pausing. "...I changed my shirt when I was out on the balcony with Scout. When you were eavesdropping."

"I promise you I looked away, honest - and I wasn't eavesdropping, I was outside first."

She glowered at him a few moments longer, then stepped into the camper and swung the door loosely closed - not latched, but still putting a barrier between her and Sniper - while Sniper stood with his back to the door, arms crossed over his chest.

"Not like I could see you in the dark anyway...and if I wanted to see that sort of thing I'd outright ask you."

"Mighty polite of you," came the sarcastic, if muffled, reply. After a few moments she opened the door again and sat down in the doorway to roll the bottoms of the pantslegs up, then roll her sleeves up to her elbows. "Just need somewhere to put these so they'll dry out."

"Hang them over the rungs of the ladder back there, it's what I do when hanging it outside isn't an option," he said, turning around.

She ducked back in to toss the clothes over the rungs, again stopping in the doorway to kick wet boots off and peel off wet socks before handing him the flashlight back. "I already feel ten degrees warmer, anyway. Thanks."

"There you two are." Engineer poked his head around the side of the camper, hat tucked under an arm. "You uh...ready to leave?" He paused, taking in Shiloh's appearance - Sniper's shirt at least looked like it fit decently but the pants were too long and a bit baggy - then looked over at Sniper. "We're ready to get going."

"Yeah, I think we're set."

"Right. I made the executive decision that I'm riding with you two, so I don't have to spend six hours with a sulking Scout. Let's move out."

\-------------------------------------

Ebenniah Zane was a man of...exceptional focus, when he had a mind for it. His sister often pointed out that his mind was a spectacular thing to be praised and preserved, usually in the midst of a gentle lecture about how he should remember to treat himself to prevent further rot from setting in.

At current he was so focused on the computer screens in front of him that it took Mr. Mann a good ten minutes of shouting to fully draw his attention.

He felt floaty, woozy, as he dragged his gaze from the screen. "Yes, Mr. Mann?"

"Is it done? Have you completed it? What is that monstrosity in the basement?"

Zane took in the elderly man's face - his expression was one born of disgust, anger, disappointment, perhaps even annoyance. He allowed his hands to drift up to his own face; it was amazing how subtle emotions on one's face were so clearly seen once you've had to reconstruct your own.

"Completed? Yes... In a manner of speaking. There are final variables to program, but soon, yes soon..."

Mann ground his teeth together, lips peeling back in a snarl. "I want a definite answer!"

Slowly Zane turned his head back to eye the screen. "It must be programmed. And tested...it has been stocked already. I still await the power banks to fully charge."

"But it will work?"

"It will work. A small surgery before your use of it is required. But yes, it will work."

"Surgery? What kind of surgery?"

Zane gently tapped a finger against the glass dome that formed the top of his head; his brain was just visible in the murky fluid and appeared to have a black netting around it with a coin-sized golden plate dully glinting on its top. "The neural mesh...it must set, and have time to learn. You will not properly awaken in a new form unless the mesh has had time to work."

Mann stared at him, a muscle just under his left eye beginning to tic. "You did not tell me this when you began. What makes you think I trust you to dig around in my brain pan?"

This floating feeling, urgh...and this man, this Mann...he felt his focus beginning to slip. He had so much work to do yet, he was so close... "You asked for a machine to make you immortal."

"I did not ask for a machine that requires brain surgery!"

"Sacrifices must be made, pain must be endured...to imitate a god one must shed the moralities of man," Zane said softly, finding himself beginning to turn from him and back to the screen. "It is a small thing to ask in return for such a machine as this."

Mann inhaled and exhaled several times through his nose; Zane's hands strayed back to the keyboard - he needed to complete his scan and then insert the anatomical reconstruction parameters into the main program, followed by scanning in the facial files-

"How does it work? Tell me that."

Zane blinked slowly, a small part of him feeling a pang of anger at the continued interruptions. "...one must gather specimens of highest quality, to be properly stored within the machine's inner chambers. This is the machine's material base...without materials for the reconstruction, there can be no revival of the host. The neural mesh must be acclimated to the host, and the host must remain within range of transmitting devices at all times. Upon willfully triggered or accidental death, sensors will broadcast to the machine..."

He paused, looking down at his hands on the keys; sister's ring was prominent on his hand - was she back yet? "...the host must have set variables, parameters, for the rebirth. Either wholesale from the beginning, or with measurements included with photographs, or one can scan the self in the secondary chamber. Upon broadcasted failure of the host, the machine will use stored data and materials to rebuild the host."

"What materials are you talking about, exactly?"

"Individuals must be harvested...ones in peak health, with age, gender, race, not relevant factors. A prior selection of end appearance is required...you could be anyone your imagination can create." The ring swam in his vision; he needed to rest, but he was so close...

Mann's lips curled back in annoyance. "It requires a steady supply of living tissue, then."

"None can create from nothing save for a god." He held up a hand to stall further questions, blinking slowly. "No more...I must rest. Have you seen my sister?"

"No," the male replied flatly, "I have not."

"You sound disappointed, Mr. Mann."

"This machine is not what was promised."

Zane finally turned to fully look at the Mann; he was surrounded by an escort of robots, none of them possessing the upgrades Zane had uploaded for the man's use. He looked absolutely livid, grinding his teeth together and shaking.

Such a strange reaction...who would not want a machine that could endlessly resurrect you? 

"I must rest and then finish my work," Zane said softly. "It is time for you to go."

"Do not think this discussion is over with."

"Of course it isn't...there is the question of payment still not rendered."

"You will be paid when I am satisfied and not before."

With a slow nod Zane looked to the robots standing around Mr. Mann. "Do see Mr. Mann to his quarters."

The robots buzzed in acknowledgement, two of them nearest to Mann seizing him by the arms and bodily carrying him from the room, Mann's indignant shouting fading as first distance and then closing doors separated him from Ebenniah.

Now alone, Zane looked back to the computer before rubbing a hand down his face. So close...yes, so close. 

It was time to rest, and perhaps when he awoke sister would have returned with that woman in tow.

\----------------------------------------------

Shiloh was sandwiched between Engineer and Sniper, her lap currently dedicated to being another surface Engineer could stack spare paper and blueprints while holding up Sniper's flashlight so he could see; currently the man was scribbling schematics and measurements of Medic's medigun, Spy's sapper, and a few other things Shiloh didn't recognize, generating multiple little schematics for each as he first drew the tools as a whole then began separating them out into individual segments with further detailed notes and math notations.

Occasionally he'd mark something out or quietly talk to himself under his breath before handing Shiloh another 'completed' schematic to hang on to.

"What is all this, anyway? I can tell what you're drawing out, but not why." 

Engineer chuckled and handed her another completed one. "Plans for a few ideas I've got... They're going to hinge on things working as well in reality as they do on paper, but I think it should shift things back over to us winning."

"I'd welcome that," Sniper grunted. "Tired of not doing anything to these things."

"Yeah, that armoring they're popping up with is a right pain in the ass. I've got a few plans in mind for that as well, no worries."

After a while Engineer collected everything he'd handed her, neatly straightened it, then stuck it up on the dashboard with the flashlight weighing it down so the air coming in through the busted driver's side window wouldn't blow it everywhere.

"That's enough thinking for one evening, nudge me if I'm needed," he yawned, slouching down in the seat to lean his head against the window, bracing his helmet between his shoulder and head to provide a sort of impromptu pillow.

"Figures the man who did the least is the one who gets to sleep first," Sniper grunted into the silence that followed.

Shiloh smiled a bit at that and scooted over toward Sniper a tad to get Engineer's elbow out of her side. "I don't think he slept much when we were at the base."

Sniper waved a hand. "Eh, I was joking anyway...mostly. Wouldn't mind a bit of time to sleep this headache off - it's not so bad I can't stand it, it's just a point of annoyance I'd rather not have right now."

"Mmm... If I had my bag I had a small bottle of aspirin in it."

"Hopefully we'll be able to go get your things back when all this is over. When they said the robots were 'dismantling' our base, I'm not sure I'm clear on what they meant."

She shrugged. "It's...nothing major. I mean, if I could just get the case with my crossbow in it I could recover - that's what I stored my money in, my knives...little things that would be the bare minimum I'd need to start over."

"How far would just money get you?"

"Providing it's enough to replace everything I had, I guess pretty far. Why? You offering to replace it all?" She gently nudged him in the ribs with a snort.

"With the money we make monthly replacing a few of your things would be a drop in a bloody bucket."

"The thought is appreciated but probably not necessary."

"Is that because you think you'll get everything back, or because you don't want the help?"

"Yes."

He snorted, shooting her a glance. "Stubborn thing, aren't you?"

She slouched a bit, clasping her hands over her stomach. "I'm not really in the habit of depending on charity, I earn what I own."

"Ha, and you think you haven't earned anything? I seem to recall you beating a robot with a hammer, then later taking a shot at a Spybot, and not three hours ago you ripped a robot's face off with a pickaxe, and that's not even counting you grabbing its attention when I was coming down that shaft. I'd think you've earned at least something by this point."

She just gave him a grin, running a hand through her hair - it was finally drying fully now that she was sitting in the breeze coming in through the window - and they settled into riding in silence; it wasn't long before Sniper noticed her starting to nod off, head drooping toward her chest before she'd jerk a bit and sit back up. He went to glance at his watch then remembered he'd smashed its face on the rocks...well, it felt like ages ago.

"Ought to be there soon."

She made a sort of acknowledging humming noise, sitting up and staring out the windshield; there wasn't much to see in the dark now that they'd left the mountainous area and were traveling back through the desert. There weren't even any oncoming vehicles, it was just the small bit of road lit up ahead of them framed in darkness so if she was hoping to stave off sleep by finding something outside to focus on she was going to be sorely disappointed.

"So...Mundy, about that bet."

"What about it?"

"If you'd rather not bother with it or me after this mess is over with, I'm fine with that. No pride needs to be stomped on, we can just call it off."

He was silent for a long moment, debating that; he'd agreed to it in a sort of heat-of-the-moment decision, and truth be told he hadn't given it much thought since then. 

"You wanting out of it?"

It was her turn to go quiet. "...I don't really know, I kind of let my mouth run away with me. It's...kind of weird contemplating having someone else around. I don't encounter people unless I go into a town, being stuck with you guys has been the longest I've been in anyone's company in a very long time."

"Can't say I'm much different in that aspect," he said after a moment. "Spend most of my time by myself waiting - waiting for targets to show themselves, waiting for missions to start or for signals to advance or fall back. I don't tend to socialize much either."

"Mmm...I do talk to people when I head back to civilization. Kind of keeps me sane, you know?"

"My teammates here are the only people I talk to on a regular basis aside from my folks. I call them every chance I get though, let them know I'm still alive. They don't care at all for my occupation, Dad thinks I'm a crazed gunman running amok killing like a bloody maniac."

She snorted at that, smiling a bit. "And your mom?"

"She doesn't approve but doesn't lecture me like a bloody child either."

Shiloh stretched, rotating her neck with a loud pop and then again scrunching down in the seat, trying to get comfortable. "If you're still willing to go through with it then so am I."

"Could be fun."

"You say that now but just wait until I ditch you in the mountains and spend a few days laughing at you."

"Assuming you can shake me."

She snorted. "You'll excuse me if I'm not going to retread that particular argument again."

"The talking's keeping me awake, you may as well."

"You're really that tired?"

He shook his head. "Nothing I can't push through. Tempted to force a turn on Engineer though, unless you're willing."

"I don't know how to drive, Mundy."

He glanced over at her, finding her staring out the passenger window. "You're joking?"

"Ah, uh...no, not joking," came the quiet reply, tone tinged with embarrassment. "Wasn't ever taught, have no means to acquire a vehicle so I'd have a reason to learn. I uh...also have no means of getting a license."

He sat up a bit straighter - she really didn't know how to drive? "It doesn't take much to get one, over here in the States they apparently have vehicles you test in. Go get a little book, study it, take a test, drive a bit, get a license."

"That requires having something to prove you're you, Mundy. I don't have that."

Sniper glanced over at her again as she slouched further in the seat. "You don't have anything? Anything at all? No identification of any sort?"

She shook her head. "My step-dad didn't include any of that in the little 'care package' he packed before he dumped me out in Vegas. If I hadn't already been ten I doubt I'd know my own birthday."

"I'm not exactly versed in the 'how' but I'm pretty sure you can track that sort of thing down, get your birth certificate or, or something."

Again she shook her head. "It's not that easy."

He was silent a long moment, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. "How'd you work at the club then? How have you done anything since then?"

"I trade labor for cash, meals, whatever I can barter off someone. As for the club...that was kind of a different time, different situation."

Again they settled into silence, an air of awkwardness filling the cab; Shiloh remained hunched in the seat but appeared to still be awake even as the silence dragged on. After some time he finally exhaled through his nose slowly. "You know, Spy said something, back when this all began."

"Yeah? About me, I'm guessing."

"He's wondering if you're hiding something, wondering if maybe our Administrator is trying to use you somehow."

"Doubt it, I'm pretty useless. And I really don't see how she could know anything about me to try and use me."

Sniper snorted loudly at that. "That woman knows a hell of a lot more than she ever lets on. She probably has your life story, maybe even your damn blood type by this point."

"No, she doesn't."

"Trust me, she probably does."

"She doesn't. I don't legally exist, Mundy." Shiloh's response was so quiet he barely heard it over the sound of the tires and the wind coming in through the busted window.

"...what?"

She crossed her arms, sighing heavily. "When I left the club Madam Zoya was...I don't think there's a word in existence to describe how mad she was. I don't pretend to know how she did it, but after I was gone she managed to wipe me from existence, so far as paperwork is concerned. I can't get my birth certificate, or go get a license, or figure out my Social Security number, because I don't have any of that. I don't exist - THEY don't exist."

Sniper opened his mouth to reply, shut it, opened it again, then ran a hand over his face. "Couldn't - wouldn't your parents have physical copies still?"

"What good would that do? If I have something but it can't be found in any level of government they could claim its a forgery or a fake, or something. I might have chosen my life of wandering on my own but Zoya effectively locked me into it by having me erased." She paused, rubbing a hand up and down an arm. "Besides...I am not going home - not back to the club, and not back to the man who abandoned me. I don't need them or anyone else."

That...was far more than he'd bargained for and perhaps wisely he let the subject drop. The remainder of the ride was quiet with Shiloh finally dozing off maybe an hour before Sniper was pulling in behind the others through heavily reinforced concrete and steel gates; the base was silent but that meant little in the scheme of things - just because nothing had popped out at them when Spy had entered to perform a bit of reconnaissance didn't mean there wasn't an army of Spybots waiting for them inside the main building.

Once parked a safe distance from any likely ambush spots Sniper and Engineer slid out of the cab, Shiloh lifting her head from the back of the seat and blinking at them blearily.

"Stay here, stay low, and stay silent," Sniper ordered, closing the camper's door as quietly as he could manage. "If you hear gunfire or anything else that's close don't be shy about getting out of here and finding somewhere to hide."

She nodded silently and Sniper retrieved his rifle from behind the driver's seat. He checked that it was loaded, quickly checked that he was carrying a sufficient supply of rounds for it, then paused before moving away from the vehicle.

"For what it's worth, seems like you've done pretty well for yourself. I'd say that's impressive."

She smiled a bit, then slid down to crouch in the camper's floor, effectively hidden from view behind the dash. "Don't go getting yourself shot, all right? You've got a bet to resolve."

He smirked at her, pushing back from the window. "No, I've got a bet to win."

"Whatever you have to tell yourself, just come back in one piece."


	24. Ch 24 - Four Questions

After the mercenaries did a sweep of the base and found no robots - Spybots or otherwise - lurking in it, those who hadn't gotten a chance to sleep headed to the barracks while the others joined Engineer in a secondary sweep meant to look for more spying devices. 

When Sniper awoke a few hours later he saw it was just himself and Shiloh left in the bunks; he stomped back into his boots and left her there, heading out to clean up what blood was left on him and to see what the others might have found during their searches. What he found instead was a flurry of activity down in the workshop - Engineer, Spy, and Medic were all hunched over the schematics Engineer had drawn on the trip over while Scout and Heavy were dismantling what was left of those Spybots and the robot they'd destroyed back at the mines. At the far end of the workshop Sniper could see Soldier and Demoman at the reloading bench, working in tandem with several boxes stacked nearby that looked to be done already.

"Looks like I'm missing all the fun."

"You and me both, Sniper."

Sniper turned in time to step out of Miss Pauling's way as the woman came bustling in behind him, pausing to look around, a bag slung over a shoulder. "What are we up to?"

"Beats me, I just woke up."

"Where's Shiloh?"

"Still asleep."

Nodding to herself Miss Pauling hurried over to where Engineer, Spy, and Medic were. "All right, do we have a plan?"

Spy stepped over to make room for her at the schematic-covered table. "Ah, Miss Pauling. A plan has not been formally decided on, we are still waiting on a few things...Engineer has been filling the time with creative toy-making."

"What do you have for us, Engineer?"

Sniper walked up behind Pauling as Engineer chuckled. "Well, while I've still got no idea what these new robots are made of, it's not so indestructible that we can't melt it. I've got Pyro melting our scrap down and Soldier and Demoman making us some specialized rounds with it. With that prototype device Shiloh had clamped to her I've also made some upgrades to Medic's gun here, and made a few things for Spy to toy around with."

Pauling nodded. "All right, good. Have we figured out where this man is yet?"

Engineer shook his head. "I'm hoping to find that out in about another hour." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward a computer against the wall behind him; several of its side panels had been opened and wires were pulled free, somewhat haphazardly connected to the three Spybot heads as well as the head of the other robot. "I've got our latest acquisition hooked up, and I'm doing another run on what's left of the others, now that I've actually got a proper computer to work off of and not that pile of junk I'd cobbled together back at Dulcimer. Any word from the Administrator?"

She shook her head. "We're on our own and I don't have anything for you, I'm sorry. I'll help you guys in any way I can, but we may as well forget about the Administrator for now. Where'd you say Shiloh was?" she asked, turning to look back at Sniper.

"Left her in the barracks asleep."

She nodded. "I need to go speak to her. If you boys need me for anything you know where to find me."

They waited in silence as she hurried from the room, then Spy slowly exhaled.

"...Engineer, I hope for all our sakes that you find something within these robots."

"So do I, Spy. So do I."

\-----------------------------------------------

"Well boys, this is it."

The mercenaries were all gathered in what looked like a command room in the middle of the base, seated around a large table with Pauling and Shiloh standing behind them, leaning against the wall. Spread across it were schematics and maps, one map in particular covered in lines and scribbles, but with a single point in its southwestern corner circled in with heavy black marker.

Engineer was the only one standing - he was oil-smeared and looked exhausted, but was grinning fiercely and jabbed a finger against the table in front of him with every word. "That big fancy robot we blew apart was intact enough that I was able to pull a few things out it. I at least know exactly where that robot was supposed to report back to."

Spy stubbed his cigarette out in an over-flowing ashtray in front of him. "I assume it is where you have most prominently marked on this map?"

"Damn right it is. You boys recognize it?"

Scout put his head in his hands, glaring at the black mark. "Ugh, that stupid dam? Really?"

"Why would he be in the dam?" Demoman asked, looking around the table. "If I were building robots the last place I'd want them near is a giant puddle of water. That's just asking for everything I had to be wiped out in one fell swoop."

"That dam is hydro-electric though," Sniper said. "We had to lock down that power plant more than once."

Engineer nodded. "Yeah, it is - if you remember Blu tried to blast the turbines out from under us a few times when they were trying to drive us out. Fact of the matter is, if I needed the resources to power a factory, well... The dam's a perfect place to set up shop and never run out of power."

"I never did like fighting there," Spy spoke up, sounding annoyed. "There are fewer places I'd consider more dangerous - one catastrophic failure would kill us all as well as anyone downstream and close to the river, not to mention the power grid attached to the plant."

Engineer dropped into his chair. "If he's actually at the dam we might not have a choice about fighting there. We at least need to check that he is-" he looked at Spy, who raised a hand in acknowledgement but did not comment further "-and then plan how to get at him."

Miss Pauling stepped up behind Demoman, resting a hand lightly on his shoulder. "Whatever you decide to do, remember that Blu is still imprisoned. If you don't find them in that base..."

Demoman turned his head to nod at her. "Aye, hasn't slipped my mind. Wouldn't be hard to plan for that sort of thing right?" He looked around the table, gaze pausing briefly on Medic.

"I can make preparations to try and take this man alive," the German said into the pause. "As it is said, turn about is fair play and he has used drugging for his own advantage already."

"That takes care of the man, then. It's all business as usual if that dam is full of robots - and I can re-adjust our ammunition for the location," Demoman said, pointing between himself as Soldier. "We don't want to be bringing the whole bloody thing down on our heads, and flesh can still take a beating from a little bang as much as a big one."

"Well that settles it for you three but what about the rest of us?" Scout interrupted, slapping a palm against the table. "We might not be chucking explosives but we ain't exactly shooting feathers here. Not even counting Sniper, just think about what me and Heavy can do. All it'd take is for that freaking moron to stumble into some crossfire and bam, no man and no way to find out where Blu is if they ain't there."

Engineer shrugged and looked at Spy; the Frenchman was silent a moment before rolling his eyes. "I will see if I can locate Blu team within the complex. If they are present then it will not be a problem. Tactics can be adjusted accordingly I am sure."

With a grin Engineer nodded, then looked down the table. "All right then. Demo? You remember the ins and outs of that place?"

"Aye, lad."

"Strategy is yours. Start roughing out attack plans and what you remember of the layout. I imagine we can blast the crap out of the buildings providing we just stay away from the turbines and dam-" he looked up at Pauling and got a curt nod, "-and we don't accidentally off our target if we need to ask where he's stashed Blu."

\---------------------------------------------

"Pauling find you?"

Shiloh looked up from where she was perched on the edge of her bunk to find Sniper standing in the doorway, looking in at her; after the meeting she'd retreated back to the barracks in the hopes of staying out of everyone's way. "Yeah, she did."

"What'd she want?" He came into the room, moving to sit down on the bunk across from her.

"It's not important. How long do you think it'll take Spy to get the information you guys are needing?"

"Couple days at most, and don't try to change the subject - what'd Pauling want?"

Shiloh shook her head. "She wants me to go with her this time, when you guys head out. It's...at face value it's nothing bad, but I don't trust her. She did pull a gun on me in recent memory."

"I don't think she'll do anything to you and even if she tried I think you're capable of handling her. Besides, she said herself - the Administrator isn't exactly communicating with us, and any order to kill you would come directly from her."

She gave him a small grin. "Not exactly comforting, but thanks. And besides, I feel like I should be less worried about me and more worried about you - all of you," she added after a pause.

He snorted, waving a hand in a dismissive gesture. "We're the last blokes you ought to be worrying about. We've had worse situations than taking on a maniac head-on."

"Maybe. Doesn't mean I want to see any of you guys get your teeth kicked in, or worse." She glanced between him and the door, pulling her legs up onto the bunk and crossing them under her. "You and everyone else here are the closest thing I've had to actual friends since I was eighteen. It's not really easy or comfortable, seeing you get hurt."

He shrugged. "It's all part of the lifestyle, sheila. About the only ones not regularly in the line of fire are me and Spy, sometimes Medic, though most of the time he's in the middle of everything keeping the rest of us alive."

She made a sort of humming noise as a response, sighing and going quiet for a moment. Sniper let the silence stretch on a bit before clearing his throat. "How'd you find out about it? About your identity getting erased and who did it?"

Shiloh let out a bark of laughter. "Oh man, that. It was embarrassing and almost got my ass arrested..." She pulled her knees to her chest, resting her arms across them, chuckling. "All right, so...the night I left - because God forbid I do anything easy and leave in broad daylight - it was on the tail end of a screaming lecture from Zoya. She wanted me to stay, wanted me to learn how to dance and the art of small talk, everything one of her entertainment girls needed to learn to work there. Like I've said before, and I will keep saying, I'm not about to be anyone's show girl, so I told her where to shove it and that there wasn't a damn thing she could do to stop me from leaving, because I'd just turned eighteen and was legally an adult."

"Right. I take it she didn't like that."

"Oh hell no she didn't," Shiloh said, grinning at him. "Right in front of everyone in the room she threatened to have me shot, disemboweled, all sorts of nasty things, which I brushed off because she'd just announced an intent to murder me in front of-" she paused, lips moving silently as she lightly tapped a thumb against her fingertips, counting "-I think there were maybe thirteen other people in the room? Something like that - I at least had the sense not to confront her alone - and, if anything happened to me, even if Zoya didn't actually have a hand in it, there'd be plenty of witnesses for a motive and that would leave a huge stinking black mark over her establishment. ...hell, I bet if I'd immediately gone and thrown myself off a bridge I could have brought down her entire club."

Sniper frowned. "Would have been a waste if you ask me."

She gave him an odd look. "Uh...all right. Anyway. The last thing she threatened me with was making me disappear, ruining my life, so on and so forth. I was already packed and ready to run, had some clothes and all the money that I'd earned that I could easily get my hands on, and off I went. I bought a bus ticket south, then kept jumping from place to place until I finally figured I'd run far enough to be forgotten about. I stopped in this middling-size town, went in to their offices to see what I had to do to get a license. I had to fill out some information that I, of course, didn't have, so they called some sort of central office for me and...they just couldn't find me. At first they thought they were having computer issues, and asked me to give them a day or two to work out the kinks...I spent a few days hanging around town, chatting up the locals, chasing leads for potential jobs once I'd settled in."

For a moment she paused, running a hand through her hair and smiling, staring down at the floor. "I let a couple days pass then went back in, and that...is when they announced they couldn't find records of me at all - there isn't a single Shiloh MacKenna anywhere in the States, and that's when they tried to arrest me for being in the country illegally. Crazy, right?" 

She started to laugh and he chuckled along with her. "Can't say I've ever been arrested in my time over here."

"No, no, I didn't get taken in. I might have sort of, well, blacked some eyes and bloodied some noses, and got shot at for the first time in my life. But I got out of that town as fast as I could, jumped in the back of a delivery truck, and it carried me to the Badlands. From there it's been one long trip of picking up skills wherever I can find them - libraries and community centers were my greatest resources when I was in civilization. Took everything I'd learned and kept applying it, building on it, and here I am."

"That is still impossible for me to wrap my head around. Sounds like a damn fairytale."

She shrugged, scratching her chin before idly rubbing the back of her neck. "Yeah, maybe...I mean, it's-" she paused to inhale and exhale noisily "-I'm not ashamed of my lifestyle, I actually quite love it. But when you lay it all out there like this it does seem pretty unbelievable. If I wasn't living it I'm not sure I'd believe it myself...but, like I said, no shame here, just some mild embarrassment when I'm reminded of what I can't do - drive, get a job, nail down a residence, that sort of thing."

"Unbelievable but pretty damn impressive regardless. What else do you know?"

With a snort she shifted on the bed to stretch out, clasping hands behind her head. "What, are you wanting my credentials or something?"

"Eh, I have to find out what I'm up against in this little bet, right?" Smirking he mirrored her movements, laying back on his own bunk and resting his hat across his face before putting his hands behind his head. "Besides, there's nothing for me to do except keep an eye on you."

"Oh, I see," she said slowly, her tone one of a mocking epiphany. "You've got nothing better to do so you're chatting me up."

He stiffened where he lay, then lifted his head and hat up to fix her with a frown. "That is not what I meant."

"Uh huh. At any rate, you know way more about me than I do about you. How about reciprocating a bit, huh?"

"Nah."

"...nah?"

"That's what I said, nah."

"What, you'll listen to anything I choose to share but won't share anything yourself?"

"Got it in one." Under his hat he was smirking; the pillow that smoked him in the side of the head shortly thereafter and sent his hat flying had him jerking in surprise with a bellowed "hey-!" before he turned to glower at the mischievous, smug little grin she was wearing. Grumbling he grabbed the flung pillow, then leaned to retrieve his hat from the floor. "Funny. Joke's on you, you're not getting this back."

"Joke's on YOU, I don't usually use pillows."

For a long moment he just stared at her, then finally he shook his head and stuck her pillow atop his own before leaning over to stick his hat under the edge of his bunk; with a grunt he stretched back out - he still had a bit of a headache so in a way he was glad there wasn't anything else for him to do aside from keep an eye on Shiloh.

And, he sort of enjoyed the conversations, to be honest.

After a pause he held up a hand, four fingers up and his thumb tucked in. "All right, fine, you get four questions and I'll answer them honestly."

\---------------------------------------

Engineer, one hand pressed to the barracks door, the door itself already cracked open several inches, stopped when he heard voices and laughter coming from inside. He edged forward and stuck his head near the opening, able to just see inside enough to spot Shiloh and Sniper on their respective bunks; from where he stood Engineer could hear the conversation, some story from Sniper's childhood it sounded like, and after a breath or two he slowly backed from the door, resting his hands on his hips.

"Well, would you look at that..." he chuckled. So much for a quick catnap before dinner he supposed - thinking about walking in there now almost felt like intruding.

Quietly he backed away from the door and headed down the hall, pausing at a junction; there was plenty to occupy himself with, but since a nap was out of the question he was left wondering what exactly would be the best use of his time. After a few moments he turned and headed for their mess hall; the projects in the workshop were as finished at they could be at the moment, some of them needing to sit while sealants dried while others just needed a few more parts that couldn't be made until Pyro got the rest of those robots melted down.

With Pyro occupied with the fun-filled task of robot scrap duty that would leave meal preparation to someone else for the evening. With Spy gone, Medic off making his personal preparations for a live capture, and the rest of them likely off checking their beer supply, Engineer supposed that left him to ensure something actually got made tonight.

Yeah, probably for the best he didn't feel like interrupting the other two for a nap.

\----------------------------------------

It was like creating a sculpture, he decided - the face and body on the screen were like clay beneath the hands of an artist as he slowly tapped in numbers for variable upon variable: weight, bone density, width of the shoulders, angle of the nose, the degree of curvature to the arches of the feet. The body was so varied and changeable when broke down into all its little individual bits and pieces...he truly could create anything, choose to be anyone, he could-

"Sir."

The robotic voice shattered his concentration; the anger that immediately rose had him twitching with such force he could barely manage to rotate his chair around to face the interruption. "What? I have asked to not be disturbed."

The Medicbot in front of him blinked the lights of its eyes several times before continuing. "Unit designated as Flagship has gone inactive. Distress signal received prior to deactivation. Detachment sent to final coordinates found no trace of unit. Ample traces of explosive residue within but not limited to: craters, divots, scorch marks-"

"-what?" Zane's voice dropped to a whisper.

Again the robot's eyes blinked on and off. "Unit designated as Flagship-"

"What happened to her? Where is my sister?"

"Location: Unknown. Remote found - origin of distress signal was destroyed. No sign of unit at final coordinates. No further communication or signal from unit detected. Faceplate and armor fragments recovered."

For the longest moment the man simply sat there, inhaling sharply and exhaling silently, staring wide-eyed at the Medicbot.

"...what happened to her? What could have happened to her?"

"Analysis concludes a 98.9475% chance unit was destroyed. Shrapnel suggests armor overcome by superior ballistic force."

As subtle as a tidal wave a sudden memory hit him - a strange mechanical device, a high-pitched whine and the sound of shattering glass, a deep booming explosion and the white-hot feel of superheated metal tearing into his arms, his face, legs-

Zane spasmed and toppled from his chair, clutching his head as a scream much like from a dying animal tore from his throat.

No no no...sister wasn't dead...sister couldn't be dead. He needed her. He NEEDED her!

"Find her find her find her FIND HER!" he found himself screaming over and over, until he tasted blood and his voice was little more than a hoarse memory. "FIND. HER."

"Acknowledged."

There was a squeak of a wheel on the floor as the Medicbot turned and rolled out of the room, leaving Zane to lay in the floor and rock back and forth, fingers digging into the degenerating skin on the sides of his head.

No, no, no, no no...


	25. Ch 25 - Bad Ideas

"You're cheating!"

"No, you're just really bad at math. You guys say I'm an idiot, but even I can add up to 21."

Sniper snorted into his morning coffee, listening in to the little argument going on at the table behind him; tiring of poker Shiloh had switched them to blackjack, and from the sounds of things Soldier wasn't having the greatest time at it.

"I can count to 21 just fine, I just do not see an optimal plan to hit it."

Sniper could hear the sounds of shuffling as Soldier lapsed into grumbling under his breath with Scout laughing at him; as Shiloh began to deal out another round Sniper turned his chair around to observe, his legs sliding under Shiloh's chair as he stretched them out in front of him, crossing them at the ankles as she shifted and tucked her feet under her, her toes banging into the soles of his feet. She turned to briefly give him a look before turning back around to the game.

This early in the morning they were the only four up and moving around, and after a light breakfast Soldier had busted out the deck of cards again. Sniper had opted out of playing, leaving the other three to engage in a fairly lop-sided game where Shiloh swept the floor with both of them, after which she'd suggested maybe they'd have better luck at something else. So far it seemed Scout was pretty good at blackjack, and Soldier...not so much.

"Here's a beginner's tip - always assume the dealer has a face card or an ace face-down, and if you've got a sixteen or better between the cards you start out with stay with it unless my imaginary face card and my face up card total more than that."

Soldier grunted at that and Sniper hid a grin behind the rim of his coffee cup; he assumed that once everyone was awake it'd be back to preparing and planning for their assault on the dam and its "master" and, according to what Engineer had mentioned last night before collapsing into bed, there were a few new things he wanted to show off.

Instead of Engineer however the next person to enter the room was Miss Pauling, who looked exactly the same as she had the night previous and made Sniper wonder if the woman actually ever slept.

"Good, here you both are. Soldier, Shiloh, I could use the two of you for a moment. Sniper, if you could look over what Demo's come up with that would be helpful - you always being at the far back gives you an advantage to remembering where doors and windows are, may as well help with the planning while we wait on Spy."

Sniper nodded at that as Shiloh collected all the cards and slid them back into their cardboard box. "Consider it done, just as soon as he drags himself out of his bunk."

"He was stirring when I poked my head in a moment ago. Anyway, Soldier, Shiloh - let's get going."

"What do you need me for, exactly?" Shiloh asked as she stood, giving the woman a wary look.

Pauling simply smiled at her and pushed her glasses up further on her nose. "You'll see, but I think you'll be agreeable. Come on, you two."

Sniper and Scout watched the three of them leave, Scout eventually turning to look over at Sniper. "What do you think that's about?"

"Couldn't tell you. Kind of suspicious though if you ask me."

"Yeah, yeah... I mean, wanting Soldier for something? Sure. Wanting Shiloh? Why? She's not one of us."

Sniper chugged the rest of his coffee before replying. "Shiloh did say yesterday that Pauling was taking her when she left...not sure why she'd need both her and Soldier." As he stood he looked toward the door they'd disappeared through. "Kind of suspicious though."

Scout drummed his fingers on the table, lips scrunching up as he stared at the door as well. "...maybe I'll go have a look."

"Since you're the only one who didn't get marching orders."

"Yeah I noticed that, guess I'm free until Engineer drags me back in for more manual labor."

"Go have a look then, you'll know where to find me."

With a scrape of his chair Scout was up and gone, jogging after the others. Sniper stood and paused long enough to shoot the door another glance; it was odd that Pauling would want Shiloh going anywhere - this WAS the woman who tried locking her into a room and pulled a gun on her previously - and, where was there to even go on base? Because if she had Soldier with them too then she clearly wasn't leaving...odd, odd, odd.

His thoughts were interrupted by Demoman stumbling through the door looking half awake and grouchier than usual.

"Hey mate, coffee's on and let's get a look at those maps you worked up last night."

\-----------------------------------------------

Whatever Pauling had them doing Soldier and Shiloh didn't make a reappearance until early evening, both of them sweaty and looking bruised but generally in good spirits. Scout wasn't with them but then Sniper hadn't seen him all day either...or anyone besides Demoman for that matter, as the two of them had spent the entire morning and afternoon going over Demoman's maps and notes on the dam.

Soldier and Shiloh dropped into chairs across the small table, Soldier giving Shiloh a grin and a nudge with his elbow before looking over the plans. "How does the battle look to be shaping up?"

"I think between the two of us we've got it down correct," Demoman answered, rubbing his eye - he still looked as tired as he had earlier - and beginning to set things out in a more organized fashion. "Sniper's got a keen eye for window detail, and I remember those hallways like the back of my hand."

Sniper tapped his fingers on a few of the hand-drawn layouts. "We were just discussing whether we wanted to kick the front door in or try being a bit more sneaky about it - the way I see it I think the front door looks to be the better option. Who expects a team to bang the door down and stomp in?" 

Soldier's grinned took on a slightly nastier look. "I approve of any plans that require kicking the front door in." He flashed his grin at Shiloh who only silently raised an eyebrow at him with a warning look.

Sniper looked between the two of them. "And what were you two up to all day?"

"That is classified."

"Come off it, Soldier - what were you doing?" Sniper fixed the other man with a frown before looking directly at Shiloh. "What'd she have you doing?"

Shiloh shrugged. "Well, she did actually ask us not to discuss it, but part of it was boxing."

"...boxing?" At his incredulous look she simply nodded. "You're serious?" Again another nod, and a grin from Soldier; Sniper stared between the two of them, mouth slightly agape.

Shiloh lifted her hands up to rest them on the table; her knuckles were red and a little raw looking with the barest hint of bruises forming. "Boxing, knuckle dusting, whatever you want to call it, we went a few rounds."

"But...why?"

"Classified," Soldier said, chuckling and crossing his arms. "You'll find out when Spy gets back."

"What's so damn important about a boxing match that you can't tell anyone about?" Demoman asked, tone dry. "I really don't see a bloody connection between a boxing match and our Spy."

Shiloh smiled sweetly at him. "I decked him in the jaw on accident once, does that work?"

Demoman blew out a sputtering laugh, shaking his head. "Ah, wish I'd been there to see that little scene play out, lass! Did he just appear out of nowhere in front of you like a bloody ghost?"

"Yeah, and - I was holding my gun when he did it so maybe he's lucky I didn't shoot. He did get socked in the jaw with the hand that was holding it though."

"Can't tell you how many times we've almost shot or burned him ourselves - he's welcome to go invisible all he likes, but the man's in need of some common sense sometimes."

Soldier snorted, making a fist and lightly bumping it against the tabletop. "I did accidentally blow him up back at the sawmill."

"Yeah, I remember that," Shiloh replied quietly. "I'm amazed he wasn't hurt worse than he was."

"There you all are."

They looked up in unison as the door at the end of the room creaked open and Engineer stuck his head into the room, a cheeky grin plastered across his face. He gestured with his gloved hand before disappearing back through the door with a "you're missing all the fun, come on."

"Well, was wondering how long before he started showing off," Sniper said into the silence that followed. "Let's go see what he's got."

"Bound to be better than staring at bloody maps," Demoman muttered as he stood, stretching.

They made it out of the room and halfway down the hallway beyond it before Sniper grabbed Shiloh by the elbow and tugged her to a stop next to the wall; he held a finger to his lips, shaking his head at her and remaining silent as Soldier and Demoman rounded a corner and their footsteps steadily faded.

"...all right, what now?" she finally asked, looking between his hand on her arm and his face.

"What did Pauling want?"

She sighed. "This again?"

"You really expect me to believe she took you and Soldier off for a boxing match?"

"I already said that was part of it." With a snort Shiloh lifted her free hand - the one attached to the arm Sniper wasn't currently gripping - and waggled raw knuckles at him. "And I wasn't lying about that."

"Then what else?"

She pointedly looked down at his hand still on her arm, then shook that arm gently before looking back up to him. "We talked some, I've got a better understanding of her and of what's going to happen. You going to let go of me any time soon?"

He released her arm, but slammed a hand against the wall beside her to block her path with his arm as she went to step around him, Shiloh coming close to burying her nose in the crook of his elbow. She flinched back with her fists clenching, fixing him with a sort of exasperated look.

"Unless you plan to pin me to the wall and ravage me, you'd better move that arm," she sighed.

"I - what?" he sputtered, yanking his hand back like she'd burned him. "What are you even going on about? THAT is the first thing out of your mouth?"

"Well it got your attention."

"Damn right it did! You think I'd hurt you?"

"I'm told some people might enjoy that sort of activity," she grumbled, crossing her arms as she leaned against the wall behind her. "What is your problem anyway?"

"What is my prob-? I've already said what my problem is! I haven't trusted Pauling around you since she pulled that gun on you, and now I want to know what she's got planned!"

Shiloh stared evenly up into his glaring face. "You don't need to worry about me. Not right now, anyway."

"Don't tell me that, tell me what she wanted."

"You aren't going to like it, you're going to throw a fit - hell, you ARE throwing a fit and I haven't even told you anything yet."

"WHAT aren't I going to like?"

She went silent for a long moment, staring up at him, expression impossible for him to read; as she opened her mouth to reply they both jumped when Demoman leaned out around the corner.

"Ey, you two coming?"

"Be there in a moment, I'm trying to talk my way back into my own pants," Shiloh quipped before Sniper could think of a reply. She tugged on the waistband of her baggy borrowed pants with a snort. "These are just loose enough to be uncomfortable, though I do appreciate you lending them," she added, looking back up to Sniper.

"Uh, right...yeah, we can go grab those," he said after a pause. Demoman shrugged and disappeared back around the corner and once his footsteps were once again not audible Sniper blew out a sigh. "Nice cover."

"Daddy didn't raise no fool. Let's...head somewhere private if you're really that dead set on weaseling this out of me."

Sniper huffed out a sigh that was part annoyance, part resignation, then turned and headed down the hall without a word; he bypassed the mess hall doorway and kept walking, leading the way through the maze-like corridors until they were both stepping outside into the evening air. Shiloh remained silent and stubbornly behind him, stopping if he stopped to remain at his back, as they headed over to where Sniper had left his camper, finally speaking up as he unlocked the back.

"Why are you so determined to hear what went on?"

Sniper inhaled loudly, tilting his head back until he was staring at the sky. "Look - I got you into this mess, I'm going to see you through it. You are my responsibility so far as I'm concerned, and Pauling's pulled a gun on you once - I don't want to bust my backside keeping you safe only to have her pop you in the head when I'm not looking. If she's got something planned, I want to hear it - I don't trust her with you."

He stepped aside to let her into the back, then turned to seat himself on the bumper squarely in the middle of the now-open camper door. 

"Well, you're about to have your evening ruined, then."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Behind him he could hear the muffled sounds of cloth being moved about and under him he could feel the gentle movements of the camper shifting as Shiloh moved around inside it.

There was a heavy sigh and then he twitched a bit as there was a sudden weight and pressure against his back; Shiloh had sat down and put her back against his as she pulled socks and boots back on. "Uh, well - she wants me to go with her, right?"

"Right."

"Yeah. Thing is, she um." There was a pause, then the weight against Sniper's back shifted and moved away as she stood. "She's waiting for Spy to come back, but Pauling plans to go with you guys - you're going to assault directly, Pauling wants to sneak in and set Blu free. And I'm going with her...she had Soldier testing my 'combat abilities' as she put it. She thinks I can handle mys-"

"-she's insane. She's nuts. You can't possibly be thinking-"

"Now hang on a moment," Shiloh interrupted. "She had a fairly good point."

Sniper twisted around, banging his knee against the camper's door frame. "Nothing of what you just said can be considered good. Has she forgotten this entire time we've been trying to keep this man from killing you? And she wants to march you through his damned front door?!"

Shiloh held up both hands in a conciliatory gesture. "Just, hang on before you start getting all indignant. This is going to depend on what Spy finds - if it seems pretty damn impossible to sneak in, she's taking me to some sort of safe house she said she uses when she's traveling around doing errands for your Administrator. If it seems doable though, she seems to think taking me with her might be the best option: if you were trying to find me where's the last place you'd think to look for me?"

"That is goddamn childish logic, 'last place you'd look' - what is she even thinking? You can't do this, you can't go. I'm not about to let you."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "You're not going to 'let' me? I appreciate everything you've done for me, Mundy, but you don't get to make that decision - actually, as I recall, you didn't argue too much about me being with you guys in that first gunfight back at that other base."

"And look at what happened! They nabbed you right out from under us! If that Spy hadn't set you loose-"

"-at least being grabbed where I was actually seen clued you guys in that I'd been taken. Those robots tunneled in, half the damn things can apparently turn invisible, and if I'd been stuffed in a room for them to find while you guys were distracted by the ones busting the gate down, how long do you think it would have taken you guys to realize I was gone?"

Sniper opened his mouth, closed it, ground his teeth together, then exhaled sharply. "I don't like it. It's not a good idea."

Shoulders slumping she dropped back into the camper's floor to sit facing him, legs crossed underneath her. "No, it's not...but when you're weighing a bad idea against other equally bad ideas, comparatively it doesn't seem so terrible."

"What other bad ideas? I've only heard the one."

"Well... If Pauling and I go running for a safe house - which, I'm under the assumption is somewhere no one but she and your Administrator know about - and we get intercepted? I mean, that robot back at Dulcimer just appeared out of nowhere...what would the two of us do if we get jumped? Miss Pauling doesn't strike me as having a skill set aimed at battling killer robots, and I just kind of...flail at them and hope for the best." She rested her hands on her knees, gently rocking back and forth where she sat. "You've taught me how to shoot a rifle, Spy's shown me a few things with a revolver, and Soldier gave me some training with his shotgun today after I went a few rounds with him so Pauling could see what kind of melee 'skills' I had...but, compared to you guys? I'm nothing. I'm terrible."

"You're being unfair," he growled, jabbing a finger in the air at her. "This is like comparing apples to oranges, sheila. You just need teaching, God knows you've got the bloody guts for this sort of thing - brawling in the damn street with a hammer against a killing machine..."

She snorted and rolled her eyes, but smiled weakly at him after a breath. "I've had teaching, Mundy. I can throw punches, sort of shoot a few kinds of guns, but I'm not you - I'm not a mercenary. Yeah, it's probably a really bad idea for me to go sneaking in with Pauling, but...they won't be looking for me inside their own base. HE won't be expecting me to be there, or at least he shouldn't be. It feels like the least-bad idea out of the rest of the bad ideas we've got."

"I do not care for the thought of you being out of my sight."

She stared down into her lap silently, picking at the roughed up skin of her knuckles. After an uncomfortable silence she sighed and looked back up at him. "We should head back inside before someone comes looking again and starts getting ideas about other things we could have been up to, off by ourselves."

He got up and out of the doorway and she stepped out, still in his shirt with her shirt folded in half and thrown over a shoulder; Sniper stuck his head into the camper briefly to see the pair of pants he'd lent were folded up neatly and sitting atop one of the cabinets. With a whoosh of a sigh through his nose he closed and locked the camper again, then jogged the few steps to bring him back even with Shiloh as they walked back toward the door.

They walked in silence until Sniper paused at the door leading in. "Why was 'ravaging' the first thing you spouted?"

"I'm a woman who regularly travels alone...there's certain types of men in this world who would take advantage of that, but, like I said - daddy didn't raise no fool."

She stepped around him and pushed the door open, moving inside; she was several steps down the hallway before Sniper shook his head and stepped in behind her. "I would never."

"I know, if I thought you would have you'd be laying on the floor sucking on your own teeth," came the response, along with a brief smirk thrown over her shoulder at him. "Though, you being the gentleman you claim to be, I imagine you'd ask first."

Sniper pressed his lips together as she faced front again and kept walking, plodding along in her wake and deciding the best course of action was not to even dignify that with a response.


	26. Ch 26 - Philosophy is a Tool

Each day that followed saw Pauling taking Shiloh off with Soldier and shutting them all into one of the base's training rooms; Sniper was still definitely against taking Shiloh anywhere near the dam, but at her request he was going to keep silent about it until Spy got back and this little plan of Pauling's came to light, then he was definitely going to be vocally against it. For now all he could do was feign ignorance as the rest of the team also began to wonder aloud at what Pauling could possibly be doing with the two of them; Scout, it turned out, had been locked out of the room when he'd initially gone to investigate, something he (loudly) reminded them about each time the subject came up.

It was early, early morning on the fourth day when a hissed word and a stirring in the barracks woke Sniper; opening just one eye he could make out the form of Engineer - no doubt trying to be as silent as possible - rolling himself out of his bunk and looking toward the door where a faint slit of light could be seen with a figure silhouetted in it. Moving just his eyes he watched Engineer walk to and then through the door, then moments later Sniper heard the low tones of him speaking to someone.

He waited, listening in the dark, until the voices faded before he silently swung himself out of his bunk and crept out of the barracks himself. Having waited just a tad too long and now not hearing Engineer or his conversational partner Sniper took a guess and headed for the workshop; the guess turned out correct as he walked in just in time to see Engineer and Spy seating themselves at one of the work tables, Spy looking exhausted and to all appearances armed with only a thick manilla envelope and a bulging cloth sack that clanked softly as he set it on the table in front of him.

"Seems you made it back in mostly one piece."

Spy waved a hand silently, closing his eyes and leaning back in his chair, head tipping back to rest against its back.

"Didn't think I'd make it out of there without you hearing me," Engineer said into the silence with a chuckle, looking over at Sniper. 

"Light sleeper out of necessity," Sniper grunted, coming in to stand at the table, planting his hands on it and leaning. "How'd it go?"

Spy rolled his head around, rubbing at the back of his neck with a grimace. "Everything we recall about the dam is useless, gentlemen." He tugged off his gloves then moved to open the envelope, pulling out carefully folded papers of hand-drawn layouts and meticulously recorded notes. "Our friend has been doing some...remodeling."

\------------------------------------------------

Spy had spent only enough time needed to neatly arrange his notes for later then had staggered off to get some rest, leaving Engineer and Sniper to look them over themselves and also investigate the sack's contents.

Engineer opened it to reveal three more of those prototype cloakers, all of them nearly identical to the one he'd pried off Shiloh's arm.

"I'm glad I don't have to take these suckers off anything," he'd remarked, carefully pulling the devices in half and carrying them over to a workbench that held an interesting little invention he'd been showing off earlier.

Just looking at the mechanical device one wouldn't have any reason to count it as important - it was an ugly thing, the innards of the prototype device bolted on to a temporary housing plate which was then attached to a battery pack with a wire cage and also a mess of hastily coiled connecting wires. An additional connector in the form of a heavy black cable hung loose from one end. 

Engineer and Medic had gleefully demonstrated its function earlier: when attached to Medic's medigun and pack, the prototype cloaker piggy-backed on the gun's shielding ability, blocking both kinetic energy from the front (in the form of bullets and rockets, mainly) and also rendering those behind the shield invisible as well as masking any sound that came from within the barrier.

The only hitch to the entire thing had been the immense drain on the medigun's power pack, resulting in the ugly contraption bolted together to its own power supply. If the shield failed or was shut off the cloak would disappear as well, but Engineer was fairly confident the cloaking would last otherwise; looking at the attachment and then at the extra cloakers Engineer was mulling over, Sniper wondered what else the man planned to shove the things into.

In fact... "What's the plan to use those for?"

Engineer chuckled, setting the pieces down and drumming his fingers on the bench. "Not sure just yet but you just give me some time... My main concern is going to be working around the power constraints without overloading or overheating anything - Medic about threw a fit at first until we worked up reasonable levels, though I can't say I blame him for being so protective of that medigun, it's probably the most vital thing we've got between us all." He went silent a moment, lightly chewing on his lower lip - Sniper could almost hear the gears moving under the hard hat. "Might be I could rig up something a bit more portable, meant for short bursts like Spy's watch...not sure who'd benefit most from carrying something like that-"

"-Shiloh would," Sniper interrupted quietly, reaching over to pick up one of the prototype halves. 

Engineer seemed to think that one over. "I could see the merit in that, sure - we definitely don't want her grabbed again, not while we're off assaulting the keep, and her having that cloaker off that Blu Spy's proved useful."

Sniper paused, mentally debating with himself before deciding that, Spy WAS back and this whole stupid plan would be coming to light soon anyway, so... "She's not getting left behind here."

"She's not?" Engineer echoed, his tone matching his look of confusion. 

"Not if Pauling gets her way later."

"...I think I missed something here, you want to back up and explain what you're talking about?"

Sniper snorted, dropping the device half he held back to the bench before turning and stomping toward the table full of notes. "Pauling's got this bloody insane notion of bringing Shiloh with us when we go to take this guy down."

"...why?"

"According to Shiloh, Pauling seems to think it'd be the last place the man'll be looking for her."

He turned and leaned against the table, facing him and watching as an array of emotion flickered across the man's face - surprise, confusion, concern, then...thoughtfulness. 

"That...makes a backward bit of sense, I guess. Who told you?"

"Shiloh did."

A sort of knowing grin worked its way across Engineer's face then. "You two have been getting pretty friendly lately."

Sniper's expression soured. "If I spent as much time talking to, to Soldier, or Demo, or even Scout - take your bloody pick - would you be giving me shit about it?"

Still chuckling Engineer moved around the workbench, hunting around and under things until he located a pencil. "I merely remarked on an interesting development. I don't care one way or the other how anyone chooses to spend their time - there's worse ways than spending it with a woman."

"Oh for - friendly conversation, that's it."

"And did I say it was anything else?" Engineer's grin was most decidedly what one would call a 'shit-eating grin.' "Something you'd like to come clean about?"

"You are talking your way into a few new holes in your head, truckie."

Shaking his head but still grinning, Engineer retrieved a notebook from atop a pile of circuit boards and flipped through it to find a clean page. "Calm down, I'm just ribbing you. I don't care who you're friends with, but just because I don't care doesn't mean our employer doesn't either. I personally don't see anything wrong with it - these parts are full of mouth-breathing idiots and it's kind of nice to meet someone with more than two braincells in their skull. The bits of conversation I've held with her weren't too bad - she's a nice enough person, just I didn't see any point in going beyond polite interaction with someone we're just going to set loose when all this is over with. Plus it's pretty damn dumb to get close to anyone in our line of work."

Sniper sighed, pushing a hand through sleep-disheveled hair. "Pauling supposedly warned her not to get attached, too. Fat lot of good that did."

Engineer shrugged, tip of his tongue poking between his lips as he drew. "Well Sniper, like I said, nothing wrong with it and no one can or should fault you...but knowing our Administrator, she's going to fault you regardless."

"You think she'd ordered her gotten rid of? Because she's been around us so long?"

"Can't say for sure. If it were me I'd be inclined to say no since it's not like she's learned anything sensitive - base locations maybe, but half our bases are out where anyone can stumble into them if they're determined enough. I'm also not one to throw away a tool once I'm done using it and I get the feeling that's about all the Administrator considers her."

"Spy's said similar, thinks the Administrator is taking advantage somehow."

Engineer snorted. "He'd have it right, knowing how he connects dots the rest of us don't even see. Can't say I know what anyone would want with Shiloh, but if Spy suspects something's up he's usually on the right track."

"That's partly something I'm worried about," Sniper grunted. He dropped into the chair Spy had vacated, scrubbing a hand through his hair again. "I feel responsible for her, getting her out of this alive is my job. The talking just kind of happened - she's entirely too easy to talk to, too open. It's like taking a dive into a damn hole you know is there and know is a bad idea to jump into it, but you did it anyway."

"Obviously you find something about her appealing or interesting since you keep talking with her. Like tends to attract like and you both got a lot in common." When Sniper didn't comment Engineer looked up at him. "You ask me I'm surprised Spy isn't all over her - pretty girl, helpless, full of secrets...womanizing sneak."

Despite himself Sniper snorted. "That woman is not helpless. Can't get that image of her wailing on a robot with a bloody hammer out of my mind."

"First impressions, Sniper," Engineer grinned, turning his attention back down to his notebook.

"You think it's a bad idea, right? Taking her with us?"

"Probably not the worst thing we could do but it's a pretty damn bad one, yeah."

Sniper nodded, leaning forward in the chair to rest his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands, rubbing fingers into his temples. "I've got the distinct feeling we're not going to win this argument, Dell."

Engineer whistled low under his breath. "Breaking out the first name, you must be pretty serious there partner." He glanced over at Sniper again, tucking the pencil behind an ear before moving to pick up one of the prototype cloakers again. "I'll back you up the best I can, but without the Administrator's all high-and-mighty voice in the sky Pauling's the one calling the shots. She at least hasn't ever steered us wrong."

"Just because something hasn't happened doesn't mean it won't."

Engineer didn't reply for a long moment, moving around to gather up various screwdrivers before settling down on a stool at the bench and beginning to open up a prototype half. "If it happens then I guess that just means we'll have to be thorough with blasting those buzzing tincans to bits." He shot Sniper a glance with a shrug. "Best defense is going to be a good offense - nothing can grab her if nothing's left standing."

\-------------------------------

"So he's added to and rearranged everything, is that it?"

Spy nodded across the table at Scout, then looked around the table at the rest of the mercenaries; Spy had opted to only rest a handful of hours, waking and spending time in an improvised darkroom to develop pictures he had taken before rounding up the rest of the team to give a full debriefing. His notes, pictures, and maps were organized across the table in their little command center, side by side with Demoman's work to show differences in what was actually at the dam now versus what they had remembered.

The differences were rather...pronounced.

The main warehouse had been expanded and filled with machines that were in constant use manufacturing robots and other armaments - there were mystery shipments that Spy had not been able to get close enough to investigate - and the underlying drainage tunnels had been closed off with heavy metal fencing. Much of the outer walkways were either gone entirely or built over, and the power plant had been so heavily guarded Spy had been forced to scale the outer wall by way of a partially dismantled fire escape and slip in through the first window he could open.

The power plant was mostly recognizable but perhaps the worst 'addition' was that of several floors under the power plant itself; based on what Spy had found there were at least three floors under the plant's ground floor, and of them Spy had only been able to slip into the top-most new addition where he had found many locked rooms along with several that had been unlocked but guarded - the unlocked ones were outfitted with computers and surgical equipment and typically had a compliment of Medicbots waiting in them...for what purpose Spy was not certain as he did not see anything but those Medicbots enter or exit them.

Spy spoke uninterrupted for nearly a half hour, referencing both his and Demo's maps, thoroughly detailing everything he had seen, and when he fell silent Pauling spoke into the pause.

"Did you find Blu?"

Spy's expression shifted to one of satisfied disgust before reaching into his suit. "I believe I did, yes. I unfortunately could not find a way down to them. Direct your attention back to this one in particular-" He reached out to select a hand-drawn map and slide it into the center of the table.

This one detailed a view he had gotten from that top-most additional basement floor, through the window of an office that looked down on a meticulously - almost neurotically - clean floor that, in Spy's own words, had reminded him of a hospital ward. The room had a large bank of computers along one wall, all of which connected to nine tube-like structures that were more toward the middle of the room that then had a long console of controls in front of it. 

"As I have already mentioned I was not able to find my way down to this floor to fully investigate what was there, and from my vantage point I could not see what was within those tubes. But we are missing nine men, there are nine tubes large enough to hold a man, and Blu's Spy informed us at the sawmill that his team members were trapped within mechanical contraptions." From within his suit Spy pulled out three more photographs - each of them was from the same vantage point and were pictures of the tube-like objects but at varying magnifications.

Miss Pauling delicately picked one up, studying it; this was one of the middle magnified ones, which showed the array of cords and cables plugged into the back and sides of the tube. "If only you could have gotten a look at what was in these to be sure, but I would say this has to be it. Did you figure out why he took them and why he did this?"

"Blu's Spy seemed convinced his teammates were being somehow beamed into machinery - their skills and knowledge being encased in metal bodies."

"Fascinating to think about," Medic spoke up. "To place one's mind into a machine, to live encased in metal without fear of death or disease, a perfect answer to altering one's body."

Scout snorted. "Yeah, but is it possible? And who'd want to be some stupid robot anyway? Look at how freaking easy it is for us to knock 'em all over and blow them to bits."

"Has it been truly so easy?" Spy repeated with a sniff. "Gentlemen, do recall that tactics are changing, their armoring is being improved. There have been upgrades made-" 

Spy looked over to Engineer, who nodded in agreement. "The only reason we haven't seen every damn bot with upgrades is right now seems things are under power constraints...but if this guy's figured out how to shove humans into robots? Not a stretch to think he'll come up with a better battery to run his hunks of junk on - it won't be a matter of 'if' boys, it's going to be a matter of 'when.'"

"As Blu's Spy so bluntly pointed out, we are running out of time," Spy continued. "The longer we delay the better his position is going to be."

"What does he even want?" Demo spoke up, slamming a fist into the table. "The bloody robots are Mann's business! All we know is this damn fool has been prancing about murdering willy nilly, but we don't know why - why he's so dead set on killing, why he's tangled with Mann, or even why he's after her-" he jerked a finger over his shoulder to where Shiloh was leaning against the wall behind them, listening in. 

"Whatever reasons he has, I think you'd be doing the world a favor if he's walking around wiping out entire towns," Shiloh said quietly. "You guys found me in the middle of one of them, remember. It...wasn't pretty."

Spy leaned against the table, fingers spread over the edges of the drawings and notes. "At any rate, gentlemen...I suggest we decide on a method of attack and execute it as quickly as possible, before our enemy pulls further ahead of us technologically."

Miss Pauling nodded, sliding the picture she held back onto the table. "I agree, Spy. Engineer? What have you gotten completed?"

"Medic's gun attachment is ready to go, as are the special rounds we whipped up after we slagged this guy's toys and I have more of those disabling darts. Spy brought me back more prototypes to work with and I can easily assemble a few more portable field cloakers. A couple extra things I'm needing to fully test include my shotgun over there and a field disruptor - based on what Spy and Soldier described to me on how this mother hubbard's fancy glove works, it sounded like a projected field similar to Medic's shield...it might be able to toss you like a rag doll, but lets see him throw anything when his toy blows his own arm off."

"You sure that's going to work? It was very unpleasant," Soldier grunted. "We cannot allow this man to cripple us in the midst of battle."

Engineer shrugged. "I can't say for certain, Soldier - I never got hit with it or even got to see it in action. I'm hoping if I can disrupt Medic's shield it'll do something against that thing."

They lapsed into silence again, several minutes passing until finally Demoman grunted and began tugging Spy's maps toward him. "All right lads, let's get to work - someone bring me a bottle, this is going to be a long day."

\----------------------------------------------------

They stood in a neat line in before him, the overhead lights reflecting off their polished exteriors and highlighting their exceptional forms as Zane walked down the line slowly, admiring them; nine elite robots completed and ready for a field test - all upgrades applied, technology at a peak unheard of. Glowing white eyes stared straight ahead as their master walked by, the only sounds from their forms being a whisper-quiet rush of air leaving exhaust vents.

"You are all lovely, exceptional, advanced and without equal," Zane said softly. "A pinnacle that man still claws to reach without realizing I have already ascended."

The robots did not move or acknowledge his words. Zane walked to stand in front of them, clasping his hands in front of him.

"I came to work for Mr. Mann intending to perfect a machine, a dream...to look upward to the face of God and inform him he is no longer needed by man. I have perfected this machine...but I have also perfected you."

He felt a twinge of pain at the base of his brain, and a strange tickling of memory threatening to surface again.

"Building you was never my intention but inspiration and innovation are the only masters I answer to. I looked upon your flawed brethren and saw a path. Now I have mastered flesh and metal. I have aspired to such heights those below me can only imagine exist, and this broken body of mine serves as a final reminder of what once was and will soon be rectified. You, however, are undeniable proof of my mastery. For far too long has man been shackled by the limitations of flesh and been trapped within the flesh we are born with."

As the words left him he felt electrified, galvanized and heartened by the sheer feeling of triumph and this absurd, razor-sharp focus possessing him to a degree the likes of which he could not recall ever experiencing.

After a moment of simply drinking in the feeling Zane began to pace, gaze on the floor as he chose his next words. "...Mr. Mann refuses to render payment for the gift I have perfected. This is not acceptable. I do not wish to see him within this facility again until he honors the agreement we made." He looked up expectantly and received a 'It will be done' from nine voiceboxes in unison. "He is not to be harmed...but educated instead, on the folly of his decision."

A sudden thought struck him, accompanied by a stabbing pain in his gut and heart; Delilah...dearest sister...his moment of triumph...

"My sister, my beautiful loving sister...the driving and guiding force behind me, that which I would have failed without... She has been taken from me again. There are not words to describe the anger and sorrow. I know who took her, and I wish for them to pay."

He inhaled deeply, twitching gently as the stabbing pains subsided, instead replaced with a sort of deep manic glee. Yes, yes...avenge sister...

"None who wrong me escape my wrath. There are eleven targets I wish removed from this world...when I have emerged from the machine's scanning chamber, I will require you to hunt these targets down and bring them to me alive. I want the pleasure of ending their lives myself, to show them how little their actions effected the outcome they fought so hard to stop."

Falling silent he continued to pace around his creations, a part of him in awe - it was truly remarkable how far he'd come and how at long last...

Abruptly he stopped, beginning to tremble and feeling that delightful focus evaporate as again he thought of sister...he had failed her so many times and yet she had always remained at his side, pushing and encouraging with soft word or insult, whatever he needed to continue moving forward. Even after he had...had killed her with a miscalculation-

Shaking, Zane turned and began to stride toward the behemoth of a machine that took up half the room. "I must scan myself and input final variables. Lock down this level...no one but I am to enter or leave it. No one, on pain of death - man or machine. Is that understood?"

'It will be done' came the response. He nodded, satisfied, then stopped before the great machine's doors, beginning to strip off his clothing. A final scan and then everything would be in place.

Immortality at last.

\-----------------------------------------------

Spy had to admit, Shiloh was a bit more like Sniper than he particularly cared for - specifically, she seemed to have the same knack that he did for disappearing into his surroundings, as Spy had spent the better part of an hour looking around the base for her before finally spotting her perched on the rooftop of one of the entryways outside. How she'd even gotten up there was a mystery - she might have been only ten feet off the ground, if that, but there wasn't anything near her that she could have climbed on to get up there.

"Miss MacKenna, could I convince you to come down and speak with me?"

From down here all he could see was the sole of one boot, which disappeared briefly as she pulled her feet out of his view moments before she leaned forward to look down at him. "I take it Pauling announced her little plan?"

"In a matter of speaking. I left the others 'discussing strategy' at an elevated volume when I noticed you had slipped from the room."

She shrugged, moving to swing her legs over the edge. "I thought Mundy was going to bring up the whole thing at the first meeting...since he didn't I figured once Tavish was done he would do it then, so I thought I'd get away from ground zero before the arguing started."

Spy smiled up at her with a small shrug. "If my understanding of the situation is correct it is highly likely he did not wish to get you or himself in trouble, hence his silence at first. Regardless, he is certainly taking up for you now."

With a grunt she slid over the edge and landed on the sidewalk in front of him, dusting off her hands. "I take it you're here to talk to me about the same thing?"

"That is my intention, yes."

"All right, let's hear the lecture then."

Spy chuckled and placed a hand on her shoulder, moving to gently guide her back inside with her putting up a wary resistance. "I do not intend to lecture you. Come, sit with me and we will speak."

With a hand still on her shoulder he moved them through the halls until he stopped at a tiny room that held only a desk, a chair, and a dusty, unused computer. He gestured at the desk's lone chair and waited for her to seat herself, then he perched himself on the desk's edge and removed a cigarette from the case within his jacket before offering the case to her. "Care for one?" 

"No thank you, it's not a habit I could afford." She waited for him to return the case to his jacket before speaking again. "So if you're not lecturing me, what do you want?"

Spy lit and then took a long pull on the cigarette, exhaling slowly. "I am told you have been engaging in combat training. At what level would you place yourself?"

Shiloh gave him a blank stare. "...what?"

"Where would you rank your combat abilities?"

"Compared to...?"

He waved the hand holding the cigarette in a dismissive gesture, almost shrugging. "Whatever you wish to compare it to - to us, to where you might have been prior to meeting us, it is your choice."

She sighed heavily, leaning forward to rest elbows on the desk and put her head in her hands, fingers rubbing her forehead. "Well...I feel like I know a lot more now, having met you guys. I don't think I'm at a level to take on a robot-filled fortress however."

"Mmm...and why is that?"

"Uh, because I'm not a mercenary?" She peeked up at him through her fingers. "Robots with guns and bombs and who knows what else aren't something I think I can handle."

"How would you rate your chances on a covert operation?"

"What, sneaking in? I know Pauling wants to set the Blu team free, but I...really don't know. Sneaking around wasn't something I did until I, well, met you guys and got a watch that turned me invisible."

Spy smirked a bit and again reached into his jacket, pulling out a folded bit of paper; he smoothed it flat on the desk in front of her. "If you had one of these, what would you rate your chances as?"

Shiloh picked up the paper, studying the schematic scratched out on it, then looked back up at Spy. "...isn't this that thing that Javier clamped to my arm?"

"It is indeed, and Engineer has several more of them to play with now. These do not function as my or the Blu Spy's watches do...this one, if provided sustained power, will keep you invisible so long as that power source does not give way."

She blinked at that, her gaze flicking between his smirk and the schematic. "...what are you asking me here? Why show me this?"

He blew a smoke ring toward the ceiling, smiling. "Miss MacKenna, my words previously to you, about you risking yourself, were spoken in anger and without thought. It is true that unnecessary risk is idiotic, but it occurs to me that you may want to play a more active role in your own well-being, yes?"

"Are you asking me if I actually want to go on this crazy little mission?"

"I am indeed. Miss Pauling spoke privately with me before breaking the news to the others - I was at first as incensed as Sniper is now. But then I thought back to the sudden surges of bravery you have shown - fighting robots armed with just a hammer, your insistence on meeting your possible demise on your own terms, the quick reaction to a perceived enemy that resulted in your fist connecting with my face, the distraction in the mineshaft and your foolhardy charge to leap to my assistance - the examples continue." He went silent a moment, staring at the trail of smoke wafting off the tip of his cigarette. "You may not be one of us, but you are a fighter in your own right. And I believe Pauling is correct in speculating that the safest place for you is within our ranks during our assault."

As he spoke she had stared quietly down at the prototype schematic, fingers drumming on the desk - a sign of nervousness, perhaps? - and after he'd fallen silent she remained that way for several moments more before she sighed heavily and rubbed her face with her hands. "Mundy will be apoplectic."

"I do not doubt that, but ultimately it is not his decision."

"You really think I'm capable of something like this? Even invisible I'm not...I'm not exactly on your level."

Spy smiled and patted her shoulder. "And that is why you will be with me - it will not be so different from the sawmill, hmm?"

She snorted then laughed a bit at that. "If you come up with a plan that has us starting out crammed into a box, I swear to God..."

He chuckled, shaking his head. "I assure you I will tailor a plan of attack to our unique talents,. If we are agreed, then, I suggest we announce your intentions to the others so that we may finalize plans and end our target with all haste."

She stood and stepped out into the hallway, waiting for Spy to stub his cigarette out on the edge of the desk before he joined her and again placed a hand on her shoulder to guide her through the halls. "...you know Mundy is not going to like me going off with you and Pauling."

"I am aware. He is...especially protective of you. I have not seen him attach to a person so quickly as he has you - it is quite heartening, in a way. A reminder that we are all of us still human and capable of forging bonds."

"Awfully philosophical of you..."

"It is my job to understand people, Miss MacKenna - it is how I imitate and infiltrate. Philosophy is just another tool at my disposal."


	27. Ch 27 - Storm the Gates

"I don't know, with you guys helping I think I've done pretty dang well keeping alive so far."

"That doesn't mean anything, not when you consider what we're about to walk in to."

Shiloh had returned to her rooftop perch after a short and sweet announcement of her intention to go with them to the dam. As predicted it had set off another round of arguments with really only Spy and Soldier supporting her choice to go - Medic was apathetic about it, Engineer and Heavy were both disapproving but willing to recognize she had the right to make that decision, and the others...were exceptionally vocal about it being a terrible idea.

Afterward Sniper had definitely found her a lot quicker than Spy had earlier, then had managed to figure out how to get up there and was now seated with his back against the same wall Shiloh was leaning against - he was actually close enough she could elbow him in the ribs if she really wanted to.

"I can't believe you want to do this."

She sighed and shrugged. "The lesser of two evils, I guess. I'd rather face the known danger than gamble on what might happen if you stuff me in a box somewhere." Briefly she glanced at him, then out toward the far wall that encircled the base. "Thanks for caring, though...don't have many people who do."

"That bother you?"

"That you care? No." After a pause she shrugged. "I don't see why it'd bother me - surprises me, maybe. I don't stay anywhere long enough to make friends, no one has any reason to care." There was another short pause, then she smirked at him. "We'll see how long you can tolerate me after all this, given that bet we've got going."

With a sniff he rubbed at his chin - right, the bet. "How're we going to handle that anyway? We get you through this and set you loose, how would we even get in touch? You're free-ranging and I go wherever my work takes me."

"I guess I could follow you around a bit, providing your boss doesn't get mad if I do. If not, I...guess I could just stay in one region and you'd have to come find me."

"Might be the only way to handle it."

They fell silent, both staring out at the far wall; the sun was just starting to set, casting a light orange glow on everything, contrasted against the shadows cast by the angles of buildings as well as those made by the antennae on the rooftops and the miscellaneous poles and power lines that crossed between buildings. 

For the longest time neither of them spoke, both content to sit in a comfortable silence and watch the shadows shift and move as the sun fell further in the sky; Sniper found himself relaxing a bit as his mind wandered back to the pictures and maps they'd been reviewing earlier, mentally running the decided upon plan over in his head-

Beside him, Shiloh shifted right as he caught the faintest glint of light that had, for a split instant, appeared just above the far wall.

"...you saw that, right?"

Sniper shook himself out of his reverie. "Yes, yes I did. Let's get back inside and warn the others that company just arrived."

"Nothing like a trial by fire," she muttered, pushing herself away from the wall behind her to scoot toward the edge and then drop over it down to the sidewalk below in a manner identical to how she'd dropped down in front of Spy earlier.

Sniper lowered himself down behind her with a grunt. "Good on you for seeing it at least."

"Yeah yeah, look at me, I'm learning things."

\--------------------------------------

It hadn't taken long to secure the doors and windows and gather in a central hallway, all armed and grim-faced at the thought of the anticipated siege having finally arrived. They were quickly sorting out their defense plan when Engineer held up a hand and their hushed conversation momentarily paused.

"You know boys, I've been thinking."

"Yeah, so? You do that a lot egghead," Scout snorted. "We ain't got time for thinking, we got robots coming over the wall, right?" He looked over at Sniper who simply nodded.

"Now now, I'm aware of that, but hear me out," Engineer chuckled, crossing his arms. "We all figured our buddy over in the dam knew we were here, and if he's sending robots to clear us out of here, well...if he wants this base so badly, I say we let him have it."

There were a few utterances of 'what?!' along with more than a few confused looks, and Engineer's grin widened - Shiloh was oddly reminded of some sort of smiling wolf creature, all fangs and bad intentions - as he held up a hand again.

"Soldier, Demoman, between the two of you I'm sure you've got enough bang to send a particularly nasty message, right?"

"...aye, lad - we've got more explosives than's probably wise. Why?"

"How fast could you rig up a few surprises to cover an exit?"

"Pretty damn fast I'd wager. What're you thinking?"

With another chuckle, Engineer jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the workshop and other rooms beyond it. "Drop this entire damn place down around the heads of any robots dumb enough to stumble in here while we slip out the back door to the trucks - best time to really field test that cloaking shield I'd say."

Medic's grin matched Engineer's. "Ah, yes...I do believe I like this plan."

"Wait, do we got everything packed?" Scout interjected. He looked around at their little circle then glanced toward the door. "I mean, we're ready? Just packing our crap and going?"

"No time like the present, boy," Engineer said with a shrug. "Get our stuff and get going while the getting's good...let him think he's got us cornered in here and won't he be surprised when we're banging on his door instead."

As Engineer was speaking Soldier had been edging away from their little huddle, sticking his head around the corner periodically to check up and down the hall. On one such check he stiffened, then jerked back around the corner. "Speaking of banging on the door, the enemy is at our own door. Literally. There is a Spybot staring in the window at us."

They fell silent at that and stared at Soldier, who shrugged and gestured around the corner. Spy strode forward, fading from view moments before he stepped out around the corner; a few breaths later he was back around with his cloak dropping away.

"Soldier is right - there is a Spybot simply staring in through the window."

Shiloh looked over a shoulder up at Sniper. "We did only see the...I don't even know what to call it, but it wasn't visible long. Could it have been just the one?"

He nodded down at her, frowning. "Could have, but why would it be in our sight and standing there? That's not what these things do."

"Some sort of distraction?" Shiloh offered, then jumped when Miss Pauling reached over to rest a hand on her arm.

"Shiloh, I've got a crazy idea if you're willing to hear me out again."

"Uh-"

Sniper reached over to pluck Pauling's hand off Shiloh's arm. "I think we've had enough crazy ideas for a lifetime, Miss Pauling."

"Just a moment, Sniper - Shiloh. You've been bait this entire time, would you like to be a bit more direct about that role?"

Tilting her head back Shiloh let out an exasperated sigh. "I'm probably going to regret this, but I'm listening."

\----------------------------------------

She slipped out the side door and paused, sucking in a breath and holding it, one hand resting nervously on the grip of her borrowed revolver and the other wrapped around the doorknob behind her in a death grip. The thought of an invisible robot army was terrifying and Shiloh had expected an assault team to immediately leap at her once she'd shut the door behind her, but the base was...exceptionally quiet, and while the sunset casting shadows everywhere wasn't helping her nerves she wasn't noticing any movement in or near the shadows either.

She took a deep breath and, keeping the building close on her right, began to circle around toward the eastern side of the base, where the lone Spybot still stood motionless at a window. 

'Everyone is watching you, you're not alone,' she kept chanting in her head - if an army jumped out at her expecting an easy target they'd be sorely mistaken, and while she couldn't see the mercenaries it was a small measure of comfort knowing they were watching.

Miss Pauling's crazy idea, as it were, was exactly this: thus far the robots had only tried to take Shiloh alive, minimizing physical harm to her. Out of everyone present at the base right now Pauling had reasoned that Shiloh was both the least likely to be shot at and also the most likely person to cause any concealed robots to come into the open to make a grab for her.

So...here she was, walking around the building to confront the Spybot and provoke any hidden robots out of cover, armed only with a revolver and, metaphorically, a bullet-proof vest.

And so far Pauling had been right - there wasn't a sign of movement anywhere that Shiloh could see...and she hadn't heard anything either as she steadily made her way around to, finally, the corner of the building.

Taking another deep breath she paused, licked her lips before tucking the lower one between her teeth, then stepped around the building and squared up to the Spybot; it was twenty feet away, further down the wall, and silently turned to regard her.

It didn't cloak, though...or reach for the pistol magnetically clamped to its hip, or make any sort of threatening motion toward her at all, it simply...well, turned to face her.

Shiloh didn't move any closer and neither did it. "Where's your friends?"

"This unit is alone."

Her fingers twitched around the revolver's grip. "I highly doubt that. What are you here for?"

"Message delivery."

She had the revolver drawn into a two-handed grip and aimed at the robot in an instant as the other lifted an arm and tugged open a compartment on its chest...but again, no weapon came into view and no threatening movements were made. The robot simply pulled a tape from the inner compartment and tossed it to the ground, the tape bouncing twice before coming to a stop several feet away from the robot - much closer to the bot than to Shiloh.

"...a message? For us? I mean - the mercenaries?"

"Affirmative. Task completed, unit shutting down."

Shiloh blinked in confusion as the Spybot abruptly crumpled into a lifeless heap; she remained standing still, her gaze moving between the deactivated Spybot and scanning her surroundings, until Spy himself faded into view several feet behind the robot.

"How much did you hear?"

"All of it - I left through a separate door as you made your way around," he replied. "I am suspicious of this 'message' as well as suspicious of what may be surrounding us."

She nodded, slowly lowering her arms but keeping her revolver in a two-handed grip; Spy edged forward and bent to carefully pick up the tape, brushing dust off it and turning it over in his hands.

"...it is at least too light to be an explosive."

Shiloh shot him a wide-eyed look. "You thought it might explode and you picked it up anyway?"

He offered her a disarming smile in response, then turned to stare down at the Spybot. "Engineer will want this, no doubt." After a moment he lifted his free hand, all but his first two fingers folded down, and gestured curtly into the air.

From around the far corner, from the direction Spy had likely come from, came Soldier and Scout; slowly but surely the other mercs trickled out of wherever they had hidden themselves to watch Shiloh approach the Spybot, and once they were all gathered around the Spybot's crumpled form - a safe distance away - Spy held up the tape for them to see.

"It claims it was sent to deliver a message. It did not say what this message was."

Scout peered between the black rectangle of plastic and the Spybot. "We're not going to trust that thing are we?"

Engineer broke off from the group and approached the Spybot, nudging it with the toe of his boot before bending down to grab it and lay it out flat on its back; kneeling beside it he pulled the chest compartment open and had a look inside, then ran his hands up and down the robot's limbs before knocking his knuckles at various places on the robot's body. Finally, he shifted to face the others, resting an arm across a knee.

"This one is just a regular bot - no upgrades like the others."

Spy tapped the tape's edge against a palm, lips pressed together as he silently stared down at the tape. "...perhaps we should investigate this message after all. We may not be able to trust it, but knowing who it originated from could be very telling indeed."

\-----------------------------------

The tape's message was short, sweet, and incredibly unexpected.

In fact, they'd rewound and watched it four times now, each viewing doing little to lessen the suspicion and surprise. 

As the tape began to play once again Gray Mann appeared on the screen ensconced behind a bulky metal desk, fingers pressed together just beneath his chin. To all appearances the man was livid and before he began speaking he flashed a rather feral snarl directly at the camera.

"This has gone on long enough. Your enemy is now OUR enemy - I want that man out of my facility. Rid me of him and in return I offer a three month truce."

After that the image flickered and switched to show a cue card filling up the screen with neat rows of eight labeled access codes displayed for about thirty seconds before the tape's message ended.

Again Spy stopped the footage and rewound it, but paused it rather than playing it again; he leaned back in his chair, clasping his hands and bringing them up toward his chin, bouncing his pointer fingers lightly against his lower lip as he stared at the frozen image of Mann on the screen in front of him.

It was Miss Pauling who finally broke the silence. "Do we feel we can trust it?"

It was a long moment before Spy answered. "Blu's Spy did say it appeared Mann was no longer in charge of his creations."

"That doesn't mean much," Demoman muttered. "This could be a trick and we'd be bloody blundering right into it."

Heavy sniffed, shrugging. "What difference does it make? We are still assaulting the dam. If message is true and these codes work? This is good. If they do not? We have neither lost nor gained."

"Heavy does have a point," Medic spoke up. "We stand to lose nothing if we ignore this message, and we have no indication that our target knows we are coming. If we are to be fighting our way in regardless I do not see how this information could condemn us. We will certainly be setting off alarms once our assault begins, and thinking these codes would - what, would cause destruction? Set off a trap? No, that is absurd - our enemy could just as easily set off the traps himself without needing to lay bait and sow suspicion."

Sniper snorted, rolling his eyes. "All right, fine, say we believe Mann's actually giving us a hand in this - anyone else think the truce is utter shit?"

"Mmm, yes...that is perhaps the most unbelievable part of this message," Spy murmured. "We will have no way of knowing if these codes are authentic or not until we use them, but we will definitely know immediately if the offering of a truce is genuine." He turned in his chair to face his team. "His obvious gain would be regaining control over his creations, but what else might he gain...that is the question."

"Hey, no, ain't no question to this," Scout snickered. "We're going to blast everything apart in there anyway, let's sabotage some stuff in there while we're at it. He wants that guy outta' there, we want that guy dead, and we're being paid to blow up robots - let's get it all in one sweep, makes sense right? Heck, we empty out the dam let's go hit our other bases and wreck whatever this guy's moved in so Mann can't use it later."

"That is an unusually good suggestion, coming from you," Spy snorted. "And, as our good doctor has said already, we will be setting off alarms during our attack. It is my vote that we at least try these codes and see where they get us."

"Then write 'em down and let's get moving," Engineer chuckled. "Time's a'wasting."

\--------------------------------------

The ride to the dam was several hours long, long enough for everyone to go over every minute detail of their plan and commit to to memory. There was also plenty of time for the adrenaline to start pumping, and the anticipation was beginning to make trigger fingers a bit twitchy.

They stopped their little convoy of trucks several miles away from the dam, well out of sight of both the dam itself and the road leading up to it; unloaded and with the trucks locked, the mercs began a roundabout trek that would bring them closer to the dam before they split off into smaller groups to approach from different directions.

Medic had his gun with the field cloaker attachment and would be with the bigger group of mercenaries to cover their approach; Sniper had one of the prototype cloakers - one that wouldn't project a field and would only hide himself - clamped to his wrist; Shiloh and Pauling were wearing the other two, neither of them meant to project a field but they wouldn't need to - Spy would be with them and he had his own cloak device to utilize. 

Spy, Pauling, and Shiloh would break away and approach the dam from the side, Spy hoping that either the fire escape and window he'd entered through would still be a viable option or that they would find some other method of entry that wouldn't draw attention to them.

Sniper would remain behind the others until they'd broken through the proverbial front gates, then he would cloak and find a perch to shoot from - a sniper of any kind was a deadly foe and being as their Sniper would effectively be invisible, they stood to potentially end this little conflict with a single bullet.

Once they split off into their groups everyone had twenty minutes to get into position - a time decided upon mainly to give Spy and the women enough time to get around to the far side of the dam facility. Under Medic's shield the rest of them waited with Engineer hidden off to the side where he could see his watch and signal the others.

Engineer watched the time tick down, tapping his foot with each second. "And that's three...two...one-"

He signaled.

\------------------------------------------------

Shiloh was crouching, cloaked, at the base of the wall that the fire escape was attached to when a muffled but unmistakable boom sounded from the far side of the facility - she took that as the clearest signal to move that she was going to get and sprang up, launching herself at and catching hold of a bar on the underside of the fire escape.

The coil of rope slung over her shoulder threw off her balance somewhat as she swung herself up to hook her legs over the bar to free her hands up to reach around the fire escape's floor and grab one of the poles supporting the safety rail that ringed it; there were no ladders attached to this thing at all - as Spy didn't strike her as much of a climber she questioned how he'd gotten up to the top of this thing in the first place - so it was a moment or two before she managed to get a solid grip high enough to leverage herself up onto the bottom floor of the escape, flat on her stomach and winded.

Step 1 "get onto the lowest level of the fire escape" was complete. Grunting, Shiloh rolled to her feet and jumped to grab at the bars above her head, repeating her grab-and-swing method until she was on top of the highest platform, by the window they were all hoping was still unlocked and also not alarmed or guarded.

Crouching down under the window's edge, out of the possible sight of anything that may be looking out of it, Shiloh dropped her cloak and slipped the rope off her shoulder and quickly secured one end of it to the railing before tossing it over. Spy and Pauling were down below her somewhere and would be climbing the rope momentarily; Shiloh cloaked again and went to get the window open - from here she could clearly hear the sounds of the mercs making their attack on the front gates, and as she silently worked the window open just far enough to let her squeeze inside she could hear the clatter of robotic feet from somewhere in the distant vicinity.

Without waiting for Spy or Pauling Shiloh slid inside and hunched there against the wall, listening and looking; after a few moments to determine that whatever she'd heard was headed away from her position she unstrapped a shotgun from her back and hefted it as she stood.

All right...she was in a very narrow hallway with no visible doorways, just as Spy had explained, and she knew if she headed to the left - the left when facing the window, at any rate - she would end up in the block of offices that overlooked the room that held those nine tube things that possibly held the captured Blu team.

The block of offices and interconnected rooms would be a bit of a maze; Shiloh was only just now hearing the sounds of Spy and Pauling making their way up and it was several tense minutes before they were finally standing next to her, cloaks momentarily dropped so they could see one another with Pauling adjusting the strap that held a first aid kit to her back.

Spy looked up and down the hall. "Did anything come through here?"

Shiloh shook her head. "Nothing that I saw, but I could hear things moving away from us that didn't sound far from here...I'm not sure from which direction, I didn't hear it for long."

"Not overly important at this moment. Let us move, ladies - Miss MacKenna, retrieve that rope if you would."

Shiloh hopped back out onto the fire escape with Pauling waiting for her to pull the rope up, untie the end, and coil it back up before turning to Spy. "Lead on - you know where we're going. Shiloh, stick close but watch behind us and don't be afraid to shoot anything."

"I would not be worried about her ability to shoot, Miss Pauling - I am far more concerned with the kit the good doctor has given us. If your aim is to double our ranks in this battle by freeing Blu, we had best hope they are not too far gone."

Pauling sighed. "I thought of that too and wish Medic was with us at the moment, but the others need him more right now. If anything this will be an extraction - I trust Medic to have provided enough here to at least get them mobile, then Shiloh and I can leave with them while you join the others and finish this."

Spy's only response was to roll his eyes before turning on his heel and quickly striding down the hall. Pauling spared Shiloh a glance before clicking on her cloak - Shiloh followed suit - and then both hurried to follow Spy as he led them through a labyrinth of empty, unused rooms, stairwells, and short hallways until finally he ducked into an empty office and then motioned for them to hurry inside; once they were in Spy shut the door and then gestured over to where a dusty window took up a small portion of the far wall, filing cabinets squeezed in on either side of it.

The window had a tiny clean spot scrubbed into the dust - most likely Spy had cleaned that spot when he took the pictures - and Pauling stuck her nose to the window to peer through it. "All right, I see those tubes below us. The question is how do we get down there?"

"I went searching for the door and could not find one that was both unlocked and led to that room. As time is of the essence I suggest a far less elegant solution," Spy said dryly, a moment before he drew his revolver. "Find somewhere to secure that rope if you would, Miss MacKenna."

\-------------------------------------------------

It was the Elite Soldierbot that first came to him, the smaller Medicbots wheeling out of its way as their superior strode through their midst and into the personal quarters of its master.

Ebenniah Zane was seated on his bed, slowly turning over Flagship's faceplate in his hands, and he had to drag his attention from it as the Soldierbot clicked its heels together as it stopped a few feet away, repeating the clicking until it was certain it had the man's attention.

"What is it?"

"We are under attack."

He blinked slowly up at the bot. "By whom? Who would be so bold?"

"Mercenaries. The ones you wished returned to you and destroyed."

Zane tilted his head first one way, then the other, then tightly gripped the faceplate to keep his hands from shaking. "Have the others departed yet?"

"Yes sir. Our Spy, Scout, and Pyro have been dispatched as per your orders."

"Unfortunate...but we will not need them. Take the others and intercept our guests...I will be there shortly. Is the woman with them?" 

"No sign of that target, only mercenaries."

With a heavy sigh and shaking hands Zane pushed himself to his feet. "Then the others will have no issue taking her. Come...we have punishment to administer."

\---------------------------------------

The others hit hard and fast the moment the cloak dropped away, and by the way the front doors blew apart under Demoman's and Soldier's initial assault it was pretty clear that this Zane - if that was the man's actual identity - hadn't thought to reinforce them in the event of an attack.

The element of surprise was quickly lost however - these were robots, not humans, with better reflexes and incapable of feeling fear. From his position behind the others Sniper watched as a response was quickly mounted even as his teammates continued to mow their way inside; their momentum would be stalled soon and they'd need to rely more on Medic's shielding as they moved further into the building and into the tight quarters the hallways leading up to the power plant would present.

After a moment Sniper tore his gaze from the fight and glanced down at the prototype cloaking device he had on his wrist; his role in this fight would be to move himself to a perch to provide cover fire while making sure he kept enough ammo on reserve to try and take out their priority target, and though he could admit the plan was sound it was just the cloaker he didn't trust in the slightest. Engineer had assured them all that he'd gotten the prototypes to work - after all, the only thing that'd kept the first one Shiloh had had clamped to her from working was an improper power source - but being dependent on a cloak attached to a battery felt like too big of a risk.

He supposed it was far too late to worry about it now, and this was entirely the wrong place and time to worry about anything anyhow. "Let's have a go at it," he muttered, clicking the device on and watching as his own body faded from his view, leaving him feeling faintly unnerved as he briefly considered the thought that he could see the ground through his legs and feet.

He shook himself and stubbornly stared ahead. All right, if memory served, then...if he headed inside and took an immediate right, straight down the hallway, then found a door labeled 'No Entry' in blue vinyl lettering, he'd be looking at a staircase that led up. Spy had not been certain where it led as at the time he couldn't get up it without risking being discovered, but so far as Sniper was concerned anything that went up would be better than trying to find a nook amongst the chaos that would be the ground floor.

So, inside, and to the right...there was the hallway, and then, there was the door. He shoved it open and stumbled a bit as he caught his feet against the doorjamb - he found it disorienting to move around due to the disconnect between where his brain thought his limbs were and what his eyes were telling him - but here were the stairs. He paused briefly to listen for anything approaching, then hurried up the stairs until he came to a door at the top that spat him out in yet another hallway, this one dotted with doors on the right wall only - the one that was on the same side as the outermost wall of the facility.

The muffled sounds of the fight going on below him were clearly coming from somewhere in front of him, so that...would mean there was only this one wall he had to find a way around. He took another right and began to jog down the hallway - Spy hadn't gotten up here on his recon mission so there'd been no updated map of this area in particular, and Sniper wasn't certain if he'd ever been up here the last time they'd been stationed at the plant. Ahead of him he could see what was either a dead end or where the hall turned left, but he could also see a single door on the left wall just before that possible dead end.

The door had a tiny placard on the wall next to it that said Roof Access, and the hallway did indeed turn to the left. Cautiously Sniper pushed the door open to find a cramped room that had only a metal-rung ladder that led upward to a trap door in the ceiling - the roof, sadly, wasn't where he needed to be right now so he closed the door and went to peer around the corner down the hallway.

This looked promising - he could see recesses in the wall that indicated either doors or windows were present on the inner wall, and he didn't see or hear anything approaching him either so he stepped out and jogged down the hall to the first recessed area to find a cubby hole that had a fuse box set into it.

The next three recessed sections of the wall also held fuse boxes, then there was just a claustrophobic room that had a mess of thick cables running from ceiling down through the floor, all of them tagged with faded labels that weren't decipherable anymore. Thankfully, the four recessed section had a door set into it that opened up to a ladder that led up to-

...well, it was the narrowest, most rickety and unsafe looking catwalk he'd ever seen in his life, but the most important detail was it was over the main power plant area - the sounds of his teammates approaching was already almost deafening - and it crisscrossed over the entirety of this room. There wouldn't be room for him to stand up while he was on the catwalk, however; it seemed the catwalk's function was to allow for the changing of the lights in the ceiling and there was maybe three and a half, four feet of space at the most between the catwalk's floor and the concrete ceiling above it.

It also looked like it would fall out from under him at the drop of a hat.

The ladder leading up to it was rusty and groaned under his weight but once Sniper was actually up and creeping across the catwalk he decided the risk of it collapsing under him was worth taking - from up here, as high as he was, the biggest targets presented to him where the tops of heads...he could probably spend the entire fight firing blindly in a downward direction and not miss a shot.

"Like shooting really stupid fish in a really big barrel," he muttered, grinning to himself.

He crawled over to the corner to his left, both the closest corner to him and also the one that gave him the best view of the room, then switched off the cloaker and pulled his rifle off his back. Below him the robots were beginning to become backed up slightly as too many attempted to make it through the doors that led to the approaching mercenaries.

"Bloody hell, it's like they want me to scatter them everywhere," he chuckled, beginning to rapidly pick off robots, alternating between shooting ones at the edge of the mob and ones that were right in the midst of things. "I think you're actually going to bore me to death before any of you get a shot at me."

Down below he finally caught sight of the rest of his team and he shifted his focus, beginning to pick targets nearest them to take some of the pressure off.

A single shot of his went wide as double doors on the left-most wall suddenly blew open; out of them, in a neat formation, strode chrome-clad robots that were-

"-ah piss, what are those things?"

\-----------------------------------------------------

It had been awhile since they'd been clustered together in a big enough group that bottle-necking in a hall was a serious problem but thankfully the old routine quickly came back - Heavy, with Medic behind him and Pyro beside him, were at the front until Heavy had to reload at which point he'd step back, Demoman and Soldier would flank Pyro, and they'd continue forward trading back and forth until finally, they got out of that damn hallway.

Granted, at the end of that hallway was a room filled to the brim with robots.

...ah well.

Heavy planted himself seven feet from the doorway as Soldier broke left and Demoman went right; Pyro and Scout charged straight ahead, neither flinching as they barreled into the oncoming horde of robots, some of them seeming to simply explode as from somewhere above Sniper began picking off the most immediate threats to the team.

Engineer remained mostly behind Heavy and Medic, stepping out only to fling miniature sentries to each side - and one behind him for a sort of improvised rear guard - before moving to set up a pair of his heavy duty sentries.

"All right boys, give 'em hell!"

One didn't really need to tell the mercenaries twice: robot bits and pieces went flying even as bullets, rockets, and bombs began hammering back at the team, most glancing off Medic's shield or missing its target. Pyro did his best to send what he could flying back into the horde and Scout's mad charge had actually done well to draw most of the heaviest fire off the rest of them; Soldier and Demo, after a few minutes of maneuvering, finally reached a safe enough distance to let loose with their explosive ordinance without fear of hitting their own team and the carnage increased.

Then, quite abruptly, some doors across the way blew inward and marching through them came a formation of robots that were bigger and definitely meaner looking than the grunts the mercs were tearing through right now.

In fact...these things looked downright deadly. They were chrome-plated - or so it seemed, as with the sporadic versions of upgrades they'd seen so far it was anyone's guess what these were made of - and had glowing red eyes. The weapons they carried were slick and black, identical to what the mercs usually carried but just...better-looking, more advanced looking was perhaps a better description. 

And, as Engineer watched from behind the others, the advanced-looking Sniperbot lifted up to the air and hovered there on jets attached to its metallic calves.

"Change of plan - kill THOSE things!" Engineer bellowed over the noise, diving and rolling away as the Sniperbot targeted him immediately, sending a shower of bullets arcing just over the uppermost edge of Medic's shield. His roll carried him back toward the hallway behind him and into the partial cover the hall's ceiling provided - the Sniperbot was now at the wrong angle to shoot him. "Swap to the special rounds and watch your heads!"


	28. Ch 28 - Divine Intervention

He had initially planned to dispatch his Elite robots in small groups to those bases he believed his mercenary targets and their woman were hiding, with his Pyro, Scout, and Spy bots being the first group dispatched. Perhaps it was divine intervention that had caused these troublesome mercenaries to attack him before he'd sent the rest of his creations away, saving him from wasting the time needed to hunt them down. It did anger him a bit however - how dare these men be so bold as to think he could be taken within his own home?

The Elites he had sent to investigate the mercenary base would no doubt return with the woman in tow, and Zane could end this day triumphant with ten of his eleven targets eliminated...merely the thought of it made him tremble.

First things first, however - there were nine targets within his home that would need to be dealt with and while he knew without doubt that his Elite robots would be more than a match for the men he wished to be present to witness their deaths or, heaven help him, have a direct hand in them if possible. 

A few minor preparations were needed, of course...his gauntlet, his ring, his kinetic shield and power core, and there were a few wires to reconnect to activate the teleportation discs within his metal chest supports. Based on his first encounter with these men his full arsenal would be beyond overkill but...well, he so seldom was given the chance to play a bit, and besides, they had killed sister. They deserved every bit of brutality he was about to administer.

His hat sat atop the computer console near the door and he solemnly donned it before bending to the keyboard and tapping out a few commands, the first of which was activating what he called the Deadman's Lock on the door that led to his magnificent machine - the door would close, reinforced beams would lock into place, and its power source would disconnect, with the only method of disabling the lock being that of a failsafe within the room itself...no one save for a recently dead man could hope to open that door.

Ah...recently dead. The thought brought a smile to Zane's face. Perhaps he should allow the men to kill him - it would only benefit him, restoring him to a hale and healthy body once again.

...no, no, he could not afford to give them any satisfaction before they died. Alas.

He shivered, one of those full-body shivers that began at his head and rippled down to his knees.

A few other minor commands were tapped out then - he locked down the room with his mercenary trophies in it, he disabled the consoles that interfaced with the robot assembly machines, he shut down and locked the warehouse that held the materials needed to continue production of his Elites. Precautions that would not be needed but...better to be over-prepared than not prepared enough he supposed.

He adjusted his hat and then strode from the room, both hearing the booms in the distance and feeling them shake the floor beneath his feet. With a heavy sigh, and with a muscle behind his left eye beginning to twinge and twitch, he tried not to think about the damage being done to his facility - he logically knew there was a price to be paid for eliminating those who defied him, but it was moderately infuriating to think upon the repairs waiting for his attention after his victory.

But, for now...he needed to focus. He needed to wipe these men out, have the woman destroyed, and then initiate his rebirth - though, if at that point Mr. Mann still had not made good on his promise of payment, there would be that matter to tend to as well.

\----------------------------------------------

"Do either of you have a handkerchief?"

"I do."

"I do as well, why?"

"So I've got something to wrap my hands with so I can get down this rope quickly. I'm only seeing these cabinets here as a possible place to tie this rope to unless you want to wedge it under the edge of the door over there somehow."

Pauling gave her a curious look. "You're wanting to go first?"

Shiloh shrugged, stepping around Spy to examine the amount of space under and around the door they'd come through. "Not really wanting, but you armed me with a shotgun - I should probably get to where I can use it pretty quickly if it ends up that I NEED to use it." She slid fingers into the gap between the door and the floor, then grabbed the door and gave it a few hard yanks - it seemed solid enough, and if there was a large enough knot in the end that was on the outside of the door the rope shouldn't slip when they climbed down it. "I'd rather not shred my hands, I've already tried shooting one of these things with an injured hand and I know it doesn't go well." She paused to glance back at the other two. "...trying to think like a mercenary, sorry."

Dropping to one knee Shiloh began to knot the end of the rope, moments later feeling a tickle against her cheek; she flinched and jerked around to see Pauling holding out two folded bits of cloth to her. "Will that rope hold?"

"There's nothing else in here to tie this to unless you count the cabinets and I at least don't want to attempt using those as an anchor." She paused in tying knots to take the cloth - it was a pair of handkerchiefs, one of which she could (faintly) smell cologne on - and stuck them under her chin; she spent a few moments more enlarging the rope knot before she cracked the door open far enough to slide the knot through, then shut it once again and braced both feet of either side of the door frame with the rope held in both hands. With a grunt and a heave she yanked backward, jerking as hard as she could with as much of her weight behind each tug as she could manage - the knot held firm under the door and the door didn't so much as creak.

"Providing no one sees the knot from the outside, this will have to do," Spy said into the silence that followed. "A good judgement call, Miss MacKenna. Come, ladies - we've a climb to make."

"I do think the best order would be Shiloh, then myself, then you," Pauling said, stepping back as Spy took aim at the window. "She does have the shotgun and would be cloaked besides - whatever might be down there should be dispatched or at least distracted until we get down behind her, and you could provide better cover fire than I could."

"Whatever, we need to just get moving," Spy growled, again leveling his revolver at the window. "Miss MacKenna, use the butt of your weapon please to clear the bottom of the frame so that we do not sever the rope when we go down it. Cloaks on, if you would."

He fired three times: one shot to the top right corner, one to the bottom left, and one dead center of the window; Shiloh slapped her cloak on then stepped up when he'd ceased shooting to use the butt end of the shotgun to shatter out a few remaining shards in the bottom of the frame as well as taking a moment to peer through the window at the floor below them.

There were a handful of Medicbots and three Engineerbots staring upward at the window. In rapid succession Shiloh swung the shotgun back onto her back, threw the rope through the shattered window, then clumsily wrapped the handkerchiefs around her hands before clambering out and rapidly sliding down the rope; because she was going down a rope hanging in empty air she immediately began swinging on her descent and ended up simply dropping the last five feet to the ground, letting the handkerchiefs drop as she pulled the shotgun around again and turned to fire point-blank into the head of an Engineerbot that had moved to try and intercept the end of the rope.

It blew apart in a spray of electronic components and there was a marked pause on the part of the remaining observing robots; Shiloh wondered at what they must be thinking - a shattered window, a rope thrown through, the rope moving under an unseen force, and then one of their fellows getting its head blasted open, all in a handful of seconds with no enemy visible.

She spun on a heel and fired at a Medicbot that strayed too close as above her the rope began to sway again, heralding Pauling's descent; this time her shot didn't do more than pepper the robot with buckshot with no real damage done but the bot did back away - it was a bit difficult to judge where the end of the shotgun was when you couldn't see it, and while the Engineerbot had been close enough to take the entire spread of the shot in one tight cluster the Medicbot hadn't been quite so close.

The destruction of one and the damaging of another of their fellows at least appeared to have made the remaining robots cautious and none went to approach the mysterious destructive rope that had appeared in their midst. Shiloh heard feet hit the ground behind her and stepped away so Pauling wouldn't blunder into her.

This room was filled with computers on the far wall, with the nine man-sized tubes more or less in its center with a computer console in front of them, and everything was stark white and impossibly clean and sterile looking. Thick cables ran from the tubes to the computers and console and the tubes themselves had frosted glass fronts with lit readout screens attached, glowing a dark green with lighter green text and some sort of squiggly beating line visible.

The office they had dropped down from was built out over the main floor, extending twenty feet from this room's wall with there being approximately a ten, maybe twelve foot distance between the office's floor and the tube room's floor, with concrete support pillars spaced eight feet apart underneath - in fact, three sides of the room had such structures jutting out from it with a spattering of windows allowing views of the floor from the offices above.

"Clear the room out," Pauling said from somewhere behind her. Shiloh nodded and headed for the nearest robots.

\-------------------------------------------

The chrome-clad robots were...something else, that was for certain. Medic had already swapped between two power packs to keep his shield up and had begun to flicker it on and off to try and reduce strain on the medigun's components - the smaller robots continued to go down without much effort but these chrome ones were resisting even the special rounds Engineer had created for them.

There was a Soldierbot, a Heavybot with a Medicbot behind him deploying similar shielding technology as Medic himself possessed, a Demobot, the flying Sniperbot that thankfully could not fly high enough to completely bypass Medic's shield, and...where were the rest of them? This couldn't possibly be all of them...

Wait, no, on the far side of the room an Engineerbot was setting up - that would prove to be a problem if it was allowed to get fully set up and going. That still left a few robots unaccounted for though...

Under their initial assault they had at least managed to nearly clear the room of the smaller, weaker robots, but they hadn't gotten much further into the room despite that - they were still right at the hallway opening they'd entered from, with Soldier and Demoman on their flanks and Scout and Pyro zipping around in the central area directly in front of where Heavy and Engineer were holding strong with Medic's shield protecting them.

Gritting his teeth Engineer slotted more potent rockets into one of his heavier sentries. "You see Soldier or Demo up there?"

"Da!" came Heavy's shouted response, barely heard over the roar of his minigun. "Is to left!"

"We got an Engineer in the back - get his attention and get that thing done in!"

\------------------------------------------------

His left arm had a few new holes in it - entirely his fault for not seeing the approaching Scoutbot until it had already aimed at him - and due to that Demoman was steadily being pushed back along the way, back the way he'd come with the rest of his team as his injured arm slowed his reload and reaction time. He was at least thankful that they had thinned the robots out enough that a few bullets in the arm wasn't a life or death deal breaker, but he certainly wasn't going to get far like this...maybe a tactical retreat back toward Medic for a quick patching up wouldn't go amiss.

Rapidly he swapped to his sticky launcher and fired a few rounds to the ground at his feet - the few remaining Scoutbots on his side of the room immediately backed away, having already learned what those spiky little bombs were capable of - and Demoman used that opening to start backpedaling quickly, the fingertips of his right hand lightly dragging along the wall beside him so he could keep his full attention on the robots without losing track of where he was in the room.

He continued to backpedal, laying out a string of stickies in his wake to discourage anything from getting close, until his heels hit the back wall - at that point he turned and ran for the protective edge of Medic's shield, leaping forward and going into a roll to almost land at the other male's feet.

"'ey doc, spare a bit of time?"

Medic didn't speak as he quickly swapped from Heavy to Demo for a few moments.

Engineer on the other hand... "Perfectly timed, Demo - you see that Engineerbot in back there?"

Demoman waited a few moments until the holes in his arm closed up enough to at least stop bleeding before he stood and looked. "-aye lad, I see it. It won't be standing much longer - last thing we need is more blasted bots running amok."

"Between Scout, Pyro, and Heavy they should provide enough cover fire and distraction for you to not get perforated on your way there - and slap Soldier on your way over and get him to close with that Medic and Heavy: I can't say for sure how much longer our Medic's shield can keep this up before something melts into a pile of slag, if he could get that Medicbot down that would even things up a bit."

"I'm on it." Demoman switched back to his grenade launcher with a grin before sprinting out from behind Medic's shield to circle around to the left side of the room.

Up ahead of him Soldier was still dealing with a small clustering of the weaker robots as well as dealing with a Sniperbot that was floating above their heads on rocket boosters. Demoman fired a few grenades up toward the floater - the bot wasn't fazed in the slightest and didn't even flinch as they narrowly passed by it - then had to dive to the side as the Sniperbot responded with a volley of rounds that tore into the floor where Demo had been moments previously.

"Oi, Jane-"

"-I am busy-"

"-bet you a pint I can blast an Engineerbot before you can bag that Medicbot."

"Your Engineerbot does not have a Heavybot guarding it."

Demoman threw himself into another roll, coming up with his sticky launcher in hand and lobbing a sticky up toward the irritating Sniperbot before sending a few stickies ahead of him into the robot cluster. "If you think it's too hard lad I'll gladly trade with you. You want I should get you a cup of coffee while I'm at it? Maybe a blanket for a wee afternoon nap?"

At that moment the Heavybot turned and sent a wall of bullets at them and the two mercenaries leaped in opposite directions; Soldier ended up closer to the Engineerbot with Demoman dodging back toward Medic and the others.

"Change of plans soldier - YOU take the Heavy and I'LL take the Engineer. I am now closer and better positioned."

"Quit jawing and get going then!" Demo grunted, ducking and rolling and getting peppered with bits of concrete as the wall beside him all but exploded under the Heavybot's onslaught.

The spray of bullets ended abruptly however as a blur appeared beside the Heavybot and its Medicbot, accompanied by a noise much like a stream of metal BBs hitting a metal garbage can - some sort of sparkling, golden shield had flickered to life around the Heavybot and Medicbot. The Sniperbot dropped down behind it, shouldering its rifle, and moments later the Soldierbot and Demobot fell in behind it as well.

As Demoman stood, panting a bit, the BBs-on-metal sound faded as Heavy and the others ceased firing - the golden shield remained up, flickering faintly, with Medic's shield also visible...whatever had just arrived had just prompted a stand off as everyone stood with weapons at the ready but without firing, waiting to see what the other party would do.

After a few moments the golden shield fell away to reveal a man standing in front of the robots, wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a navy blue jacket that was open, revealing some sort of metal vest-like object wrapped around his abdomen that had a collection of red and gold blinking lights visible.

\---------------------------------------

He stood calmly, chin down near his chest and his head tilted to one side, one hand extended ahead of him with the other hand pressing two fingers to one of the golden lights on his metal vest.

"I suppose I should thank you," he said softly, head ticking to one side slightly, "for saving me the time of having to find you...but you deserve no thanks, not after you so crudely murdered my dear sister."

Zane watched as the hard hat-wearing man exchanged a brief look of confusion with the male in a white lab coat that was ahead of him.

"Did you not know? Or have you chosen to forget? It matters little...she died at your hands, one of many sins you have committed against me. Do you know the first wrong you have done? You shelter a woman...I greatly want her - I require her, you see."

In the front there, next to a being entirely clad in a bright red suit and facemask, was a smaller male that was mouthing, shouting something, but for the life of him Zane couldn't interpret it - there was a roaring in his ears, an anger that drowned out anything and everything else. These men...these men had been such a pain, a needless thorn in his side, and here they were...right in front of him...

"You have dogged me at every step, attempted to kill me with your little ambush, you've destroyed many of my experiments, you keep the woman from me, and now you attack me in my own home. There are none on this earth that escape me - no one, do you understand?"

As he spoke his anger grew - his breath grew ragged and his mouth tasted of bile as he began to tremble and shake - and so too did his volume, until he was finally screaming at the top of his lungs.

"None escape me! You will be the first! And then I will hunt down your woman and then Helen, and your dissected remains will be used to keep me alive until time itself stops!"

From somewhere above him a single shot rang out and his head was abruptly jammed sideways to slam into his own shoulder; there was a crack that resounded through his skull followed by the dull sound of the liquid surrounded his brain sloshing about as, without realizing it, Zane righted himself and watched in a dazed curiosity as seemingly in slow motion his hat fell to the floor at his feet.

His vision was swimming and still there was that persistent roar in his ears, but he was alive; he stroked a few fingers over the glass dome that made up the top half of his skull, feeling a spidery crack but no leaking fluid.

Something from above had shot him.

Gently he pressed his hand to his kinetic shielding activator as the mercenaries, no doubt spurred again to action by the boldness of the shot to his head, began to shoot at him again - the shield easily held off the assault as Zane allowed his gaze to drift upward.

There was an enemy somewhere above him.

"Kill everyone here," he murmured. "I will see to the one who shot me."

His Elite Medic's shield flared to life as his kinetic shield shut off; with a whoosh of air Zane blinked out of sight and reappeared on the catwalk above him, hearing a soft clink echo through his head as the glass of his skull lightly bumped into the ceiling above him. There wasn't enough room to stand and the catwalk swayed beneath his weight as he turned and examined his surroundings - the catwalk was obviously meant to give access to the large lights up here and so formed a grid-like pattern of walkways around the lights.

But, aside from himself, he could see no other being up here.

He pressed his hands together, then ran fingers down the metal cone that covered the top of the nearest light, it's purpose to direct all the light coming from the large bulb within it down to the floor below.

A moment later he gestured at the thick cording and support chains that suspended the light from the ceiling, using his ring and gauntlet to simultaneously push and pull at them until he'd ripped the light free and held it suspended in front of him in the force field generated by his tools. He briefly hesitated until he selected a direction and flung the light, directing it up one of the longer segments of the catwalk and pushing it with the ring's field until it slammed into the wall and shattered.

There was no blood and the light hadn't deflected off anything, so his invisible attacker was not there.

No matter, there were plenty of lights left.

\------------------------------------------------------

Sniper had to bite a knuckle to keep from swearing aloud as his perfectly placed shot did little more than scratch an itch on the man's head - it was like that blasted ambush all over again, with some sort of highly bullet-proof glass making him look like a fool.

If that was how this was going to go then forget the head shots: a man could die just as easily from a shot to the heart or other vital organ as he would from a shot through the brain. Sniper moved slowly to remove the spent casing and slid it into a pocket, so it wouldn't drop and reveal his position, then had to ever-so-carefully ratchet in a few more rounds - with the fighting down below having come to a stalemate as that idiot in the hat gave some sort of screeching speech of death and doom, any noise made on Sniper's part would-

Wait, never mind - apparently his shot had reminded the others that they had a damn job to do and hell broke loose down there again.

As he reloaded he watched as the man slowly turned to look up toward the catwalks...and then moments later he was simply - simply up there, on the catwalks.

Bloody hell...so Soldier and Spy hadn't been joking when they said the man could just teleport as he pleased.

Sniper paused in lifting his rifle up again as the catwalk swayed and groaned with the man's additional weight - the man's coat was open, showing off some sort of metal casing around his midsection that was dotted with blinking lights, and with the hat gone Sniper could see the glass dome - slightly cracked, at least - that made up the top of his head...and he could see liquid sloshing around and a darker object within it that couldn't be anything else but a brain.

That was annoying - the brain was goddamn visible and yet Sniper couldn't punch a single bullet through to nail it.

He flinched and grabbed at the nearest edge of the catwalk as the man, with just a gesture of his hands, ripped a light free from the ceiling and then hurled it down the length of catwalk he stood on; it smashed into the wall and Sniper watched the man regard it thoughtful before turning his attention to another light.

Gritting his teeth Sniper shot a glance toward the ladder he'd climbed to get up here - all things considered, it now seemed really far away.

\--------------------------------------------------

"Was that all of them? Do you think there's any invisible ones in here?"

As the cloak fell away Pauling's shrug was visible. "We won't know until one jumps out at us - Spy, have a look at those tubes, I'm going to check that console there. If there seems to be any method of input on those things let me know."

Spy, his cloak turned off now as well, nodded and moved to begin pacing around the tubes, bending to poke and prod at the cables and readouts.

Shiloh remained standing where she was, halfway between Pauling at the console and the rope they'd come down, surrounded by busted robots - scrap metal, really - and feeling awkward. She'd made it down the rope, had shot a few things, and now...now what?

"What do you want me doing?"

"Um," came Pauling's distracted response. She was bent over the console, muttering to herself before glancing up in her direction. "Just, watch the window to make sure nothing drops down on us, and see those doors behind me? Watch those too."

Shiloh turned her head, looking first up at the busted window and then over to the doors Pauling mentioned - she had seen the doors during her sweep of the room, they were metal and looked to maybe be powered somehow...at least, she hoped they were powered, and activated by the button next to the door, because the doors lacked handles of any sort. 

She found that by standing at the end of the computer console she could see both the window and the doors and for several minutes she stood there silently and tried ignoring a rising feeling of unease as, from the corner of an eye, she could see Pauling tapping away at keyboards and muttering and looking like she was having no success at whatever exactly she was trying to do - all Shiloh knew was Pauling wanted to set the other team free...HOW Pauling would do that hadn't been explained to her.

Her attention was drawn completely to the doors as there was a sudden audible click followed by several muted thuds; even Pauling heard it, straightening and turning to face them.

Shiloh's gaze was riveted on the doors - they weren't opening, so... "What was that?"

Pauling was silent a moment. "I think we just got locked in."

"Uh...is that...bad?"

"I'm not actually sure whether to categorize that as good or bad - that might mean they know we're in here, or it could be someone locked the doors so that the team can't get in." Pauling eyed the doors a few moments longer, then turned back to the computer console. "If I could just figure out which code goes where here..."

She went back to tapping at keys, Spy circling around with a quiet murmured report as he moved to assist her; Shiloh stayed where she was, trying to keep an eye on the door and window.

"Aha, there-" Pauling blew out a sigh, pushing her glasses up and stuffing the paper with the codes back into her waistband. From in front of her there was a beeping and one of the screens began to swim with rapidly-appearing lines of text.

Despite herself Shiloh edged over closer to try and get a look, then jumped when a mechanized voice announced that an 'Emergency Override' had activated, then jumped a second time as the tubes all emitted a loud hiss in unison moments before lights and whirring noises began to issue from them.

"What did you do?"

Pauling hurried around the edge of the computer console and down to the tubes, slinging the first aid kit down to the ground in front of her as she waited before one of the center-most tubes.

The tube's lights went dark after a moment or two, then the glass panel on the front slid open and into the tube's side out of sight; inside it was a thin man almost hidden from view by wires and sensors held to his skin by surgical tape with a sterile and stale smell wafting out from the tube's inside. A mask that had covered his face popped free with another hiss of air, revealing a pale but youthful face, and restraints began popping free shortly after the mask retracted into the top of the tube; Pauling and Spy scrambled to catch the male as he tipped forward and out of his mechanical prison with a groan.

"Oh boy - uh, Shiloh, could you lend a hand- Spy, get to one yourself-"

Shiloh let the shotgun swing to her back and scurried around the console in time to get in front of the tube second from the end nearest her; Pauling quickly dragged the man she'd caught away from the tube and leaned him against the console, then stepped over and got ready to grab the next person to be ejected from a tube.

The tube in front of Shiloh opened and, after a few minutes of sensors popping free and the mask removing itself, she found herself staggering under the weight of a massive mountain of a man and was reduced to pivoting awkwardly on her feet and trying not to drop him as she maneuvered him to lean him against the console behind her. As she stood upright, panting heavily, she winced when she saw open wounds - sort of like pockmarks - dotting the man's shaved skull, beginning to bleed profusely.

'Beamed into machinery,' she thought to herself, gritting her teeth. There must have been wires or sensors embedded into the man's head that had been pulled free.

She spun and barely managed to snag the arm of the next male freed from the next tube, this one built of solid muscle but not nearly so beefy as the other had been. Again she maneuvered him down to lean against the console, next to the other - the huge man was coming to, groaning and beginning to blink blearily, suddenly stretching a leg out in front of him like he'd only just realized movement was possible.

Shiloh stepped over the leg and down to the tube at the end of the line, the glass only just beginning to draw back and-

"-oh shit, Miss Pauling-!"

Javier's body took longer to disconnect from the tube's inner workings as, unlike the first two men Shiloh had caught, his arms had several IVs inserted which immediately began to bleed the moment they were pulled free. Shiloh thought back to the last time she'd seen him: sprinting away, telling her and Spy to run, leading away pursuers to give them a chance to get free. Whatever had happened to him after that it was obvious the robots had not bothered to patch him up before stuffing him into the tube - he was more or less one big bruise dotted with badly healed cuts that stank of infection, his face swollen and caked in dried blood, and based on the strange way his left knee was moving it was clear that it was broken or at the very least dislocated.

Miss Pauling was suddenly next to Shiloh, reaching out to help her guide Javier down to the floor. "What- oh dear, that looks bad. None of the others are this bad - now I really wish Medic had come with us."

Shiloh glanced down the line of recently liberated men; if she matched up their body types with those mercs she already knew she could almost pick out what type of 'job' the men must hold - she had been saddled with catching their Heavy she belatedly realized, along with what she guessed was their Soldier - and Pauling was most definitely correct in saying none of the others were as battered as Javier was.

"Here, sit him down here - give me a moment, I'll be right back," Pauling said, hurrying over to where she'd sat the first aid kit. She yanked its lid open to reveal a case full of neat lines of syringes, all filled with a reddish fluid along with your basic bandages, antiseptics, surgical tape, and other medical odds and ends. With a few quickly muttered instructions Pauling handed a handful of the syringes to Spy before bringing the entire kit over to where Shiloh knelt with Javier, holding the still-unconscious man upright.

"I honestly have no idea how effective these are going to be considering...that," Pauling said, gesturing at Javier, "but here, do you know how to find a vein?"

"Not in the slightest. What are those things?" Shiloh stared at the syringes - they seemed very out of place and not at all like what Shiloh expected to find in a first aid kit.

Pauling picked one of them up and flicked the red fluid-filled barrel; at the disturbance the liquid began to glow softly. "These are basically steroid shots along with a dose of liquified...whatever it is that Medic has in the pack attached to his medigun. They're rather difficult to make and he hates putting them together because of that but in a pinch they can get someone functioning again with enough shots of this." She paused to glance down into the kit and Shiloh looked down as well - counting what was there and accounting for the ones Pauling had handed Spy there were twenty syringes. "I had planned on three for each man with the few extras going to whoever needed them the most, but...I don't think even four shots of this will get Blu Spy back on his feet."

Shiloh nodded at that, her attention going back to Javier; she let her gaze roam over him, making a mental tally of his injuries. It was...a fairly extensive list, and she almost jumped out of her skin when Pauling suddenly grabbed her arm.

"Wait a moment, we're in a room with discarded mediguns off those robots. Could you go grab one?"

"Sure." Shiloh jumped up and ran over to the heap of busted robots, surveying the pile before grabbing at a pack and trying to drag it free; the medigun and pack were still firmly attached to its robot user - it actually appeared to be bolted on - so she had no choice but to drag the entire damn robot with her over to where Pauling had moved hold Javier upright.

"All right, good - do you know how to use it?"

"Sort of...Medic had me move his around and help him fix his leg once. There's a - yeah, there's a switch, and then you push the handle forward..." 

The robot's medigun wasn't quite identical to Medic's but it was similar enough that after a few moments of fiddling - with Pauling suggesting where to look for switches and the release for the handle - Shiloh activated the medigun, aimed it at Javier, and then pushed the handle forward.

And...nothing happened.

"Damn it, I was afraid of that," Pauling swore quietly, pressing her lips together. "It was a long shot but at least we tried."

"Did I do something wrong?"

"No, I think you did it right, it's just - why would a medigun that works on a robot work on a man?"

"...oh. That makes sense."

Shiloh dropped the gun and gave the robot a nudge away; so much for an easy solution... She moved to kneel back beside Javier and Pauling as Pauling readied a syringe.

"Um, if we lay him on his back and you hand me those bandages and something to clean him with...I mean, that's about the only way I'll be useful here and maybe it'll at least help to clean some of this crap away."

Pauling nodded and helped her lay Javier out; he still hadn't opened his eyes or even made a sound, and if he hadn't been visibly breathing he could have easily been mistaken for a dead man. 

Shiloh caught a small bottle of antiseptic as Pauling tossed it over to her, then caught the roll of bandage and a cotton pad that followed it, then took a deep breath as she looked Javier over again, thinking back to Sniper announcing that Shiloh's injuries were beyond his skill to doctor back when he'd hauled her out of the street and sat her on the tailgate of a truck.

She now knew exactly how he felt...

Pauling found a vein and injected the syringe's contents into the unresponsive Blu Spy before she moved away to quickly tend to the other men, mumbling something about giving the first shot time to work and moments after the woman stepped away Shiloh could hear the rumble of quiet conversations beginning as the men became more aware of their surroundings and of what had happened as Pauling moved among them.

"All right Javier," Shiloh muttered. She reached into her pocket and pulled free the knife she'd taken from a Spybot, using it to trim a few smaller lengths of bandage. "Don't you die on me, I owe you..."

\-------------------------------------------------------

From behind the safety of its sentry the Elite Engineerbot watched as the humans again began assaulting its fellows. To its count there were a few targets missing and it kept regularly scanning over its shoulder, fully expecting some sort of ambush. Humans were predictable, or so its programming told it.

It continued to steadily feed ammo and rockets to its sentry - unfortunately there wasn't room for more than one in this doorway - and waited for something fleshy to stray within shotgun range.

And then it paused as a small alert sounded within its head: Security Breach in the Stasis Room.

Security breach...he knew his creator had locked down that room, but as it had already noted there was not a full set of nine mercenaries here it could only conclude that the ones that were not present had just somehow broken into the Stasis Room.

The Elite Engineer turned and strode back down the hall to where it had placed a teleporter out of sight and safely tucked away behind the corner.

Its master would be very displeased if his test subjects were tampered with, but would be elated if the ones attempting the tampering were dispatched swiftly.

It stepped onto the teleporter and was whisked away.


	29. Ch 29 - Phase Two

Between the Medicbot's shield and their own Medic's shield it was a miracle Engineer could hear himself think - the sounds of rockets, grenades, and bullets shattering was deafening and actually giving him a headache, and he was regularly around this stuff to begin with.

At any rate he could add a sore throat to the headache as he had to bellow a few times to be heard over the cacophony. "PHASE TWO, BOYS - GET MOVING!"

Without waiting for much more than a hint of acknowledgement Engineer turned, scooped his shotgun up, and headed back the way they'd come at a pace a bit faster than a jog; behind him Pyro and Scout fell in behind the safety of Medic's shield, Scout bleeding from minor cuts and a single bullet hole in his right bicep but otherwise the two males were still healthy. On the outside of the shield Soldier and Demoman continued to harry the Medicbot, being driven away by their robotic counterparts as well as sudden bursts from the Heavybot attempting to keep them at a distance. When they took note of Engineer and the others retreating down the hallway they broke off their attack and scattered - Demoman rushing for a side hallway and Soldier making one last frenzied gamble on reaching the Engineerbot's position.

Soldier took a few stray shots to a shoulder as he plucked the two grenades from the front of his jacket and tossed them as he ducked and dodged, weaving in an almost drunken pattern to avoid the Sniperbot above him, the Demobot lobbing grenades both at and ahead of him, and the Soldierbot's near misses with its rocket fire.

Right as Soldier stepped within range of the Engineerbot's sentry the grenades he'd thrown detonated; a part of him was amazed his wild throws had gotten that near to the sentry so he wasn't too heartbroken over the fact that the sentry was only knocked over rather than destroyed. In that same instant a near miss from one of the Soldierbot's rockets was a bit TOO near - the shock wave lifted Soldier off his feet and flung him forward toward his destination directly into the sideways sentry.

The collision sent the sentry skidding across the concrete floor under the combined force of Soldier's weight and its own wild firing as it tried - and failed - to track and aim at the male; Soldier, helmet slightly askew from colliding with the sentry, blindly dragged himself forward into the hallway and the limited cover it provided, lifting his helmet and blinking to try and clear the stars from his vision as his breath hitched...it sort of felt like he'd shattered his ribcage against the damn thing, but that was silly - if he'd shattered his ribcage he wouldn't be breathing at all and this was no time for indulging in exaggeration.

Out in the main room behind him he could hear the Heavybot's minigun spinning but it sounded fainter now - it must be following the others down the hallway. This was good, it was one less thing for Soldier to worry about and gave phase two of their plan a higher chance of success since the Medic and Heavybot combination was the deadliest threat facing them right now.

There were, however, metallic feet pounding toward him, THAT much he could tell. And where was that damn Engineerbot anyway?

Lifting his head and hobbling along partly on his knees and leaning heavily against the wall as he waited for his diaphragm to stop aching, Soldier took a quick look around - there was the sentry pointed uselessly at the back wall, unable to turn around toward him; there was some sort of fancy crate full of ammunition for the sentry, already half-empty...but other than that the hallway was empty and he knew there had been an Engineerbot cowering back here not five minutes ago.

Soldier continued down the hallway, the footsteps getting closer; he staggered over to the crate of ammunition and then got behind it, ducking down with just the top of his head visible over its edge. The thought that he was sheltering behind a crate full of explosives hadn't escaped him...actually, as his breath became less ragged, a plan was forming in his head. After a moment to mull over his half-formed plan - and with the footsteps dangerously close now - Soldier gripped the edge of the crate and turned it on its side, sending bandoliers of bullets tumbling out and small rockets rolling across the floor.

The metal crate, it turned out, slid rather well on the concrete floor - Soldier had laid his launcher across his lap, braced himself against the floor and planted his boots against the crate's side, then kicked out with as much force as he could manage; this had sent the crate skidding across the floor until it came to a stop right at the hall's opening, further sending its contents rolling everywhere in something akin to a miniature tidal wave.

He picked up his launcher, grunting a bit, then leveled it at the crate and fired and was treated to a brief glimpse of the Soldierbot coming into view right as the crate and both what was left in it and what ammunition had spilled around it detonated.

\--------------------------------------

When Pauling came back to kneel down beside Shiloh and Javier a second time she had one of the other mercs with her, a man that was painfully pale and platinum blonde who immediately reached to take the cloth and antiseptic Shiloh held and began to tend to Javier himself.

"Shiloh, this is Blu's Medic - help him if he needs it but you can let him take it from here."

With a nod Shiloh scooted out of the other man's way, moving around to Javier's other side and silently watching the Medic inspect and doctor those injuries she hadn't already cleaned up. He was carefully cleaning away the crusted blood from a gash at the corner of the man's eye when Javier's eyes fluttered open and he flinched from the Medic's touch, gaze darting around without seeming to see anything; Shiloh grabbed at his hand as, with an agonized groan, he weakly moved as though he were trying to reach into a jacket pocket that was no longer there.

"Easy, ea- hey, easy-"

After a moment his attention fell on her and she finally saw a light of recognition in his eyes after a pause.

"...you..."

"Hold him still," the Medic instructed, German accent much thicker than Medic's - Red...Medic's...the Medic Shiloh knew, not this blonde man.

Not for the first time Shiloh wished she had more than a job description for the majority of these men.

Javier's eyelids fluttered shut for a moment before he opened them again, blinked heavily, then turned his head to stare at the Blu Medic. "...where..."

"We're in the lion's den, you could say," Shiloh answered, resting her free hand lightly on Javier's shoulder. "Just lay still, we'll get you out of here."

"You...shouldn't be...here." He sucked in a breath and attempted to sit up, Shiloh's hand on his shoulder preventing upward movement. "He will know-"

"Just stay put."

He went limp, eventually shutting his eyes again; Shiloh took a moment to eye first the Blu Medic, then the rest of the men that were milling about - the syringes appeared to have done their job as everyone save for Javier was on their feet and clustered around Miss Pauling. From here Shiloh could hear Pauling giving them an update on what had happened and on what was happening right this moment in the other part of the facility; the men looked battered, many of them bruised and dotted with scars and scabs from badly mended or slowly healed past injuries - Shiloh could recall Javier saying his team had been hunted down and captured - as well as minor injuries they all shared: raw marks around their noses and mouths from the breathing masks, open bloodied holes on their heads from sensors, reddened marks from where restraints had been for weeks and pressure sores from being trapped in the same position for so long.

The bleeding sensor marks on Blu Medic's head were especially noticeable against his unbelievably blonde hair and in an attempt not to stare at Javier Shiloh found her attention kept being drawn to the splashes of red. At one point the Medic caught her looking at them, wrinkling his brow.

"What is it?"

"Sorry, you're just - you're bleeding, doctor."

The Medic paused and reached up to lightly touch a ring finger to one of the open wounds, looking at the bloodied tip of his finger for a moment before wiping it clean on his trousers. "It will stop. This is more important, yes?" he said, nodding down to Javier. She nodded in response, was given a small smile in return, and then he went back to doctoring the Spy.

"What has happened?" Javier finally hissed, opening his eyes and staring up at Shiloh.

"Storming the castle," Shiloh said, blowing out a sigh as she glanced up at the cluster of men again. "The others - my team, Red, I guess - is assaulting the building to draw attention off here, so we can set you guys loose and get you armed...um, somehow. I wasn't included in that bit of planning, just in the plan to get in here and set you all free."

Javier grunted and tried to sit up again; Blu Medic slid an arm behind his shoulders to help lift him, Shiloh moving to assist at the man's nod. Now upright Javier swayed a bit unsteadily before hunching forward - the Medic took this opportunity to examine the sores and injuries on the Spy's back - and grimacing as he tried to straighten his bad leg.

"How long do we have?"

"I have no idea."

"Miss Pauling knows."

"Um...probably?"

"That was not a question."

Shiloh's response was cut short when she was almost yanked to her feet by a rough tug on the shotgun strapped to her back. "Whoa-!" she staggered, then a hand grabbed her by the waistband and set her fully on her feet; when the hands on strap and waistband let go she turned and stared up into the face of the male she assumed to be Blu's Soldier.

"What idiot gave you a strap that doesn't break away?" he growled down at her. "Give me that weapon, woman - you're being relieved."

"...did it not cross your mind to ask for it first?" she blurted out, hands fumbling for the strap's release.

He snorted and crossed his arms, waiting; he had a shaved head and was muscled with a tattoo on each bicep of a stylized eagle in black. The army pants he wore were threadbare around the corners of the pockets - and there were a lot of pockets up and down the outer pantslegs - and they were bloodstained on the inner left thigh. Like all the others he was bare to the waist and bearing the marks of prolonged captivity in those tubes.

She finally got the clasp to release and handed over the shotgun to him; he took it and ran his hands over it, ejected the two shells already loaded and checked inside there before loading them again and snapping the gun shut. 

"Ammo."

She handed over the leather case clipped to her waistband. "I didn't use a lot of it."

"Good, I'm going to need it. You're the one who shot those?" he nodded curtly in the direction of the pile of ruined robots. She nodded mutely in reply, and he sniffed. "It could have been done better, but decent job nonetheless. Let the men with training take it from here."

Now it was her turn to snort and roll her eyes. "If that was a jab at my gender-"

"-I don't care what you've got swinging between your legs, you're not trained, end of story."

She watched him stomp away; the cluster of mercs was breaking up some, with Spy leading three of them over toward the double doors, leaving the others to stand around or lean against the computer console and glare balefully at their prisons. The Soldier that had just taken her shotgun moved away to loom over those near the door - they looked to be trying to pry open the wall paneling and keypad next to it - and the Medic was still finishing up with Javier.

Then, without fanfare, the doors slid open, and a chrome-covered Engineerbot was framed in them.

From where she stood Shiloh clearly heard the Soldier growl a "Well, shit."

\----------------------------------

Sniper had been slowly working his way toward the ladder, moving only when a thrown light was crashing across the catwalk; they were getting uncomfortably close and he hoped the man wasn't observant enough to notice a few stray bits of shrapnel striking something in midair and dropping away, as Sniper couldn't make himself incorporeal as well as invisible. He was twenty feet from the ladder...just a bit more-

"Sir."

Sniper froze, as did Zane, when the Sniperbot flew up from below; it sounded like the fight had died down again down there - he'd been far too focused on not being crushed under a light to keep tabs on the goings on - and Sniper spared the floor a glance to see Engineer and the others were retreating. If they were leaving it was time for the second part of the plan and Sniper would have needed to get out of here regardless-

"What is it?" 

Sniper glanced back over to the man and the bot as the man let the light hovering in front of him crash to the floor below.

"We have a security breach, Stasis Room. Engineer Elite reports the test subjects are free."

The man's expression darkened and Sniper sucked in a breath as the other's gaze roamed over the catwalks a final time before he simply...wasn't there anymore. 

The Sniperbot, on the other hand...

Sniper exhaled and inhaled, and in that quick moment lifted his rifle up, took aim, and fired a shot that was neatly threaded through the openings in the catwalk's floor. The rockets on the robot's legs were built into the leg itself; there was an opening that visible fire and exhaust rushed from but there were no other discernible edges, so Sniper's shot was purely instinct and estimation but he had a brief surge of satisfaction as his round struck just above the exhaust opening and collapsed it partly inward.

With the port damaged the downward thrust was no longer funneled in one uniform direction; the robot's leg shifted outward, and even though the angle wasn't much it was still enough to send the bot slamming into the catwalk at the knees, which then sent it falling forward onto the catwalk from momentum alone.

Sniper rose into a hunched-over stand, catwalk groaning under him with the added weight of the robot, and began to fire rapidly into the top of the robot's shoulders. Deep dents began appearing as the robot hauled itself to its knees and Sniper could easily the track the robot's gaze as it stared in the direction his shots were coming from, looked down to where the empty casings were falling, then pulled itself into a kneeling position and aimed its rifle in his general direction.

He tried not to flinch as two bullets whizzed by close enough he felt a breath of wind against an ear as he reloaded and placed a bullet directly into the robot's scope - at this distance the loss of the scope wouldn't mean much but it at least had the effect of making the Sniperbot cautious enough to dip to one side in anticipation of a follow up shot.

Sniper tracked it and fired a second time, this time aiming for the metal hands holding the rifle; sparks flew and the robot actually made a strange noise and flinched its shot hand away.

Now THAT was interesting, the damned thing had almost acted like it'd felt pain. Sniper had sometimes seen robots take steps to prevent their immediate destruction but that generally only included things like ducking around corners or even behind their own fellows (and they had steadily been getting better at imitating the mercs, even before this mess with Shiloh and the upgraded robots) but...this was the first time Sniper had ever seen an out and out human-like reaction.

Blu had been beamed into machines...what if Spy was wrong about those tubes? There wasn't an actual human being in those metal bodies were there?

The idea wasn't pleasant and while he hadn't thought too much on what would happen if Blu wasn't able to be saved the tone of this fight would certainly change if each destroyed robot was actually a mercy killing. 'Bad luck for you, mate, if that's true' he thought somberly, taking aim and beginning to pepper the robot's hands with shot after shot.

With each successive strike Sniper began to see little bits of metal fly until finally a finger or two dropped free; the Sniperbot at this point had stopped trying to get a finger into its trigger lock and began to half-crawl across the catwalk in Sniper's direction.

With the robot's rifle blocking a clean line of fire at the head Sniper went for body shots even as he backed away toward the ladder, leaving increasingly deeper dents in the bot's armoring.

The robot suddenly went to get its hands back into position on its weapon. "I know exactly where you are now."

As it spoke it moved next to a light that was still hanging untouched, and in that moment Sniper noticed something odd; up to this point he hadn't really been able to pick out facial "features" such as they were - the grunt robot fodder he was used to always had the same type of imitation facial features like mouths and jawlines along with their eyes. There was a persistent glare on the lower half of the robot's face and it wore a metal hat that shadowed the upper half, but as the robot moved next to that hanging light the glare on the lower half shifted and revealed what looked like a slightly duller patch of metal where the mouth should have been on its otherwise blank face.

Did that thing have a mouth then or was that a trick of the light? Its voice had to be coming from somewhere...

Sniper felt his hat lift off his head and fall away as the bot shot at him even as he raised his scope to his eye and focused on the bot's face.

...that was a speaker. If it weren't for the angle of the lighting up here it would have been unnoticeable, but through the scope Sniper could just barely make out the fine hatch-mark pattern.

Sniper ducked and fired in the same breath as the robot did, and while he wasn't a religious man he imagined this would be the time he'd pray - for his shot to hit and the one coming for him to miss.

There was a sting of pain and a hot sensation blossomed from his left ear but across the way the robot jerked back and convulsed slightly, the barrel of its rifle slamming into the catwalk beneath it.

Despite the hole in the top of his ear Sniper smirked when he saw the large open, sparking bullet hole in the robot's mouth. He slid a new round into his rifle and tracked along with the robot's movements and fired again, widening the hole; there must have been something vital that he'd at the very least clipped with that first shot and then made worse with the second as the Sniperbot's jerking movements became more pronounced...maybe he'd hit whatever controlled its movement or balance.

He kept firing, widening the hole until finally the upper section of the robot's head fell open entirely, revealing a mess of sparking and glowing wires, circuit boards, blinking lights, and other such mechanical nonsense that he knew Engineer would have a damn field day with.

Sniper flinched and jumped back when there was a sudden loud detonation from below, his movements and the shock wave from below making the catwalk heave and then sag alarmingly; taking a final look at the Sniperbot, he turned and then sprinted in a hunched over and awkward gait until he got to the ladder and all but threw himself at it and hauled himself off the catwalk and down to the hallway beyond the ladder.

Leaning against the wall in the hallway, facing the door that led to the ladder, he gingerly touched a hand to his ear and brought it away soaked with blood; it was going to hurt like hell when the medigun fixed it but as he caught his breath and heard the creak and groan of the catwalk - or part of it anyway - giving way he counted himself lucky, miraculously lucky even, that he'd only lost his hat and gotten a large hole in his ear. That had been by far the closest he'd ever come to being on the receiving end what of he was usually the one dishing out...

All right, with that behind him...

The Sniperbot had said something about a security breach in a Stasis Room, and whatever that might have meant it was important enough to draw their main target away. He had a sinking feeling in his gut that that meant Zane was about to teleport in on top of Spy and the others.

Right on top of Shiloh, and Miss Pauling too.

He shot a glance up and down the hallway; he was supposed to make his way to the roof now and cover his teammates from above, but hell...if Zane really was about to burst in on Pauling's group then they'd all be sitting ducks, and Shiloh would no doubt be the first one the man targeted.

...his teammates would just have to handle themselves without him for now, at least until he assessed the situation happening elsewhere.

He had no idea where this Stasis Room was in relation to his current location but now he was damned determined to go find it.

\-------------------------------------

As he ran Demoman peppered the floor and walls around him with sticky bombs, humming cheerfully as he could hear footsteps somewhere behind him and so long as he didn't hear the familiar 'whompf' of a grenade shot he knew he still had time to reach his destination and set up his next little surprise.

The sticky trail he was leaving was of regular stickies, not the special ones Engineer had slipped to him before they'd headed out - apparently there had been just enough left of that fancy pants robot for five special bombs, just for him, and he knew exactly what he could do with them providing he got there in enough time before his pursuer caught up to him.

This part of the facility he was running through was full of storage rooms and a few scattered break rooms that had once serviced the men that had built the dam years ago. Thanks to Spy's investigation he knew this hallway hadn't been altered in any way, and if he could get down it then up a half-flight of stairs to a landing, there was a set of heavy metal security doors that...well, he wasn't sure what they'd been installed for since they just led outside and there wasn't anything of importance in the landing, but it was the doors he was needing for this plan to work.

He took the stairs four at a time as the thudding detonations of his stickies echoed up the hallway behind him, and then there he was, right at the doors.

With a grunt he pushed through them and then dragged them shut again before turning and quickly laying a very specific pattern of stickies against the borders of the doors and at the hinges; after that he quickly laid out a cluster of stickies right inside the doors and then ejected all that were left in the gun before loading the five special rounds in.

He backed away to the far wall, gently rotating his shooting arm and waiting.

"Come on you rusty hat stand, right on through the doors..."

The doors were shoved open with much more force than Demoman had actually anticipated but the stickies held; he watched the Demobot glance down at the nest of stickies in the floor before it began to rapidly backpedal as the doors began to swing shut. Demoman hit the detonation button on his launcher and was deafened as all the stickies went off at once, sending the doors ripping free from the wall and firing backward into the room the Demobot had just backpedaled into.

There was a mighty clang of metal meeting metal as the doors hit the robot and blasted it backward, with Demoman rushing along in their wake and firing beyond the robot as it shook itself free of the doors and rolled away from the human...directly into the special sticky rounds Demo had just fired past it.

It stood with the stickies clinging to its back even as Demoman was sprinting back into the other room, swinging himself flat against the wall as he hit his detonator again.

When it began to rain robot pieces he started laughing as he slid down the wall to catch his breath.


	30. Ch 30 - Hang on to Me

Outside of the claustrophobic hallway and out of the robots's line of sight beyond the doorway, Medic switched off the shield and finally had a moment to check the medigun for signs of failure; he had never used the shield for such a prolonged time and even though he and Engineer had run numbers on various scenarios to show that the gun could handle the strain that didn't mean real life results would match up to what was on the paper.

He was incredibly relieved to see that while certain components were running much hotter than normal everything seemed stable and not on the verge of failure...yet, anyway. With a grunt he pressed himself flat against the wall of the building with Pyro and Scout against the wall between him and the door, and Engineer and Heavy perhaps fifty feet away in full view of the door standing behind a final sentry that was equipped to deploy a miniature, short-term shield.

Engineer's gaze was riveted on the door; in one hand he held two spherical objects about the size of golf balls and in the other he had his shotgun. This next part was almost entirely dependent on that man, and Medic glanced between his own feet and the doorway, mentally calculating distance and radius...

"Get ready," he muttered to Pyro and Scout. "You must time this correctly. You do not want to be caught in the blast radius and neither do I - if I must make a choice I will save the medigun before I will save you. Now, let us hope Engineer did not forget to carry any ones."

"How bad would it be if he did?"

Medic tilted his head from side to side, thinking that over. "...very. So exceptionally bad we would not have time to contemplate it before dying a fairly violent death so little reason to really fret over it, yes?"

Scout rolled his eyes. "Way to inspire some freaking confidence, doc."

"I am not here to give grand speeches. You have not lost the items, correct?"

Scout shook his head and patted a case still strapped to his left thigh. "Nope, still got them right here - these things better stick or I don't know what we're going to do."

"I would suggest being ready to run."

\------------------------------------

Shiloh caught a glimpse of the mercenary team scattering to each side of the room before she was seized by the belt and slung down behind the console, almost on top of Javier as the man pulled her down and into cover. The Blu Medic shot him a warning look but helped Shiloh to her knees next to him. 

"What is out there?" Javier hissed, struggling into a kneeling position himself.

"A robot that looks like Engi- what the hell do you think you're doing?" she interrupted herself, slapping at his hand as it went to the revolver on her hip. "You can't even stand up."

"I refuse to be unarmed for this."

She shoved his hand away as he reached for the gun again. "No way, you're in no shape to be fighting."

At that point Blu Medic gently closed a hand around the man's wrist. "She is right," he said quietly. "You will not be able to walk on that knee, and as I am without means to mend you you will require support to be mobile. If you are wanting her to give her weapon up then it should be given to someone who can most effectively use it." He glanced over at Shiloh. "Apologies, Fraulein - I did hear Soldier, and if you do not possess the experience we do-"

"No no, I get it," Shiloh broke in. "And I can hand it off to someone, no problem - just not him," she jerked her thumb toward Javier.

The Medic nodded as Javier angrily snatched his arm from his grasp; Shiloh scooted away from Javier to peek around the console's edge at what was happening.

The Soldier that had taken her shotgun was pressed into the meager cover that one of the support pillars provided, unable to pop out to take a few shots at the robot as the bot itself was close enough that the majority of its own shotgun's spread would tear the man apart. The rest of Blu had wisely backed into cover, unable and also unwilling to rush headlong at an armed robot when they weren't even fully clothed.

The Engineerbot hadn't come very far into the room, perhaps aware that its current position kept the Soldier at bay, and it had even thought to shut the door behind it; Shiloh quickly looked around to try and get a head count and idea of where everyone was and noted that, as she was hoping and expecting, Spy was nowhere to be seen.

"I really hope he has a plan..." she muttered, pulling back behind the console and looking over at the Medic. "Can you shoot?"

"I am trained with small arms, yes. I wish we had the time - our Scout would be your better choice."

She went to unbuckle her belt to slide the revolver free, then froze when there was a soft rush of air and a voice from the direction of the door.

\----------------------------------------------------------

Zane appeared just inside of the doors, pleased to see first that the doors were closed and secondly that his Elite Engineer was ahead of him with the men already more or less corralled...or, so he thought. It seemed his sudden arrival had inspired reckless bravery in at least one of them - a male nearest them, behind a pillar, ducked out and fired. 

Some of the shot peppered harmlessly against his Elite's armor, then rest of it dissolving to nothing as Zane raised his shield. His Elite responded in kind and fired twice, a spray of shot catching the man in the side and sending him stumbling back into the pillar's cover.

"Pitiful," Zane murmured. "And wasteful - I still require you and do not wish to kill, but I warn you not to force my hand... Now...how did you escape?"

He let his gaze roam around the room; for the most part his test subjects were pressed against the walls or partially ducked behind the computer console or the analysis and stasis chambers. There was a woman standing at the side of the console, partly behind it but peering over it, a snub-nosed revolver visible in her hands.

"You...who are you?" he asked quietly. He raised his gauntlet-clad hand and gestured, dragging the woman out from behind the console and holding her several feet from the ground. 

She was dressed in a purple blouse and skirt...he hadn't seen this one before. A muscle behind an eye began twitching as he remembered the purple shawl his sister had been so fond of...

The twitching spread from his eye to his neck, his head beginning to gently tick to the left. "I asked you a question."

His response was the woman leveling the revolver and firing; the bullet struck his shield and he shook his head, pressing the fingers of his gauntlet-clad hand together while gesturing with the ring-bearing hand - the woman's weapon stayed in place but the woman was thrown backwards to hit the ground and roll several times. He then clenched a fist and the barrel and cylinder of the revolver were crushed; with a sniff Zane let the ruined weapon fall to the floor before he gestured for the injured shotgun-wielding male.

Pushing with the ring and pulling with the gauntlet resulted in the man being slammed face-first into the support pillar before being sent rolling across the floor toward the stasis chambers; he pulled the shotgun to himself with the gauntlet's field then shattered the weapon in half.

"This struggle is pointless...back into the chambers with you. Now." He looked to his Elite. "Round them up and place them ba-"

His words were cut off as he was seized from behind, an object dropping over his eyes and blocking his vision, followed by a stinging, cold sensation at his throat. Without hardly thinking he blinked away, banging his knees into the computer console in his rush to get away from whatever had grabbed him; behind him he heard the sound of a metallic object striking the floor as well as the sounds of a scuffle followed by a heavy thud.

The stinging sensation was persisting...how strange. 

As Zane turned he pressed fingers to his neck and brought them away with a thin smear of blood on them; behind him on the floor near the door he could see the Elite standing over a man in a maroon suit, a dropped knife with a hint of blood on it on the floor several feet from them.

The maroon-clad man turned his head to spit; his lower lip was bloodied and already visibly swelling and there was a barely audible clicking sound as a tooth went bouncing away.

"Stay your weapon, I surrender," the man said, to a chorus of "WHAT?!" from the other men in the room.

Zane tilted his head at that. "Surrender..."

The other looked around at those in the room before scooting back from the robot just enough to sit up. "Yes, I surrender. I will not get a room full of unarmed men murdered. There is a time and place for bravado, after all - you have the better position, I am out-maneuvered. I surrender."

Zane clasped his hands behind his back, studying the male. "...disarm him," he finally said. "Then restrain the others."

He watched as his Elite shifted the shotgun to a one-handed grip and reached down to pull the slender male to a standing position; the man carefully raised one hand into the air, then slowly reached into his suit jacket and removed a revolver, offering it grip-first to the Elite. A small amount of ammo followed, the Elite dumping it to the floor and scattering it with a kick before tossing the revolver back toward Zane. Finally, the male reached to his hip and pulled a metal case the size of his hand free.

"Be careful with these, they are very volatile," the man warned as he handed it over. "And, I require both hands to remove my remaining tools."

"Very well. Make no sudden moves," the Elite intoned. It turned the metal case over in its hand then used a thumb to pop the case's lid open; the case looked to be full of...what were these, darts?

Very slowly the man's hands inched for his lower back and there were a few clicks before he brought a sapper around and held it up, then seconds later the metal case in the Elite's hands began to hum with brilliant bits of blue-white energy arcing.

There was a very brief sound of crackling then a deafening detonation that rocked the room and charged the air to such a degree Zane felt pain shooting up his arms and across his chest as the energies reacted with his mechanical parts. His vision even clouded over for a brief instant, sparking a sudden feel of deep panic, something he hadn't truly felt in ages but the panic was immediately drowned in an irrational anger.

How dare he - how DARE HE-

His beautiful Elite was flat on its back and convulsing crazily, its eyes and voice box blown out, an arm in multiple pieces, and its chest armor caved in and blackened. Beyond him the honor-less, filthy liar of a man was sprawled on his side on the ground, body stiff and with visible burn marks on his front.

His wonderful marvel, his Elite, done in by lies and deceit...his Elite ruined and broken and the man responsible still breathing? No. No, this would not stand.

Zane thrust his hands forward and picked up the Elite's remains, slamming them down on the prone man, again and again, and-

Something struck him in the jaw then, something solid and forceful enough that his head snapped back and the Elite held within his fields went flying to the side to crash into the wall as his arms jerked and swung at the impact. He staggered, nearly falling, as a second blow followed the first, then came another; there was nothing in front of him, and yet something continued to pummel him - face, chest, throat, stomach, the blows kept coming every time he attempted to right himself.

Blindly he struck out with the ring and gauntlet and heard a pained yelp and a delayed sound of something colliding with the doors.

Zane pressed hands to his face and found them covered in blood - his nose was shattered, his lips busted, his stomach protesting.

"What-"

A figure came into view near the doors, seemingly materializing from thin air, a woman pulling herself to her feet and leaning against the wall, shaking her head to clear it.

A woman.

THE woman.

"...you."

She looked up, licking her lips and wiping her mouth on an arm. "Hey, you a fan of hide and seek?"

Slamming a fist against the door controls, she leaped backwards as they slid open and then darted out of sight beyond them.

She was here...she was HERE and she had just- 

An anger so profound rose in him then, bile mingling with the taste of blood in his mouth.

He let out an incoherent, guttural scream, and teleported himself to the door and stepped out. There was no sign of the woman but he could hear footsteps rapidly sprinting away from him.

"You will not escape me twice!" he screamed, voice gurgling around the blood filling his mouth.

\-------------------------------------------------------

Miss Pauling was limping slightly when she made her way over to roll Spy onto his back. "Spy - Spy, are you all right?"

"I've felt better, Miss Pauling," he groaned. "I do not think he broke...much of anything important, but I am in a bit of pain."

Blu's Medic came hurrying up as the rest of his team - save for Javier and their Soldier - moved to ring the Engineerbot, their Scout picking up the robot's discarded shotgun and discharging it several times into the robot's head and chest, finally putting an end to the machine's frenzied spasms.

Spy didn't move much aside from involuntary twitches as the Medic looked him over; the German finally looked up at Pauling. "Well, he is burnt on his front and he has ribs that are at least dislocated if not broken, but nothing is life-threatening save for the breathing difficulty he is going to have. I also suspect a mild concussion."

Pauling shook her head. "We need to get him to Red's Medic - he has his medigun, he can fix this and fix all of you."

"Where is he?"

Pauling stood, wincing as an ankle protested. "He's with the others assaulting the front but by now they've probably moved on to other parts of the facility - if we can get back to that main room though there's going to be plenty of broken robots and discarded guns you guys can pick up. We need someone to help carry our spies-"

"HEY!"

They all jumped and looked up at the shout; above them, leaning out through the window, was one very bloodied and cross-looking Sniper.

"Sniper? What are you doing here? You're supposed to be-"

"I don't give a damn, Zane's on his way here!" he shouted down at them. "You lot need to move and move now!"

"Uh..." Pauling exchanged glances with the Medic. "You just missed him, Sniper, and actually-"

From where he lay on the floor the injured Blu Soldier twisted to shout up to the window. "The man's gone, out chasing after that other woman. Probably the only reason we're not-"

"-what? Damn it!" Sniper swore loudly and disappeared from the broken window.

Pauling limped toward the door, shaking her head. "Come on, we've got to hurry - even if Zane wasn't chasing Shiloh at the moment he's still our priority target and he's technically getting away."

Blu's Sniper opted to carry Javier while their Medic helped Spy to his feet, and with their Scout and Demoman supporting their Soldier the group began to cautiously move down the hallway beyond the door with their Heavy at the front, armed with the shotgun taken off the Engineerbot.

They moved in tense silence until the Heavy held up a hand and gestured for them to stop as they reached where the hallway turned to the right; putting a finger to his lips he carefully snuck up and poked his head out just enough to get an eye around the corner, then he jumped around with a shout and was answered with an equally loud shout.

"Prove you're human, maggot!"

"Drop weapon and I'll consider it!"

Pauling edged up and peered around the corner to see the Heavy squaring off against Red's Soldier, Heavy with his shotgun leveled at the other's head and Soldier with his launcher aimed at the other's gut.

"Guys, we're all human here - Soldier, Heavy, put those down."

"Hello Miss Pauling. If you claim you are human that is good enough for me." Soldier let his launcher's end droop toward the floor, snapping off a quick salute at her.

Pauling blew out a heavy sigh, pushing her glasses up. "Where did you come from, Soldier?"

"An Engineerbot placed a teleporter. I took the teleporter and ended up down here."

Her expression lightened at that. "A teleporter? Where? We need to get these men armed and get this mission over with."

Soldier gestured over a shoulder. "Back this way and to our right in a corner. Has the Engineerbot been taken care of?"

"Yes, it has been destroyed," Blu's Heavy growled. "Are we done wasting time here?"

Pauling put a hand on his shoulder. "Enough, Heavy - all right, Soldier, you lead the way." 

Soldier nodded and spun on a heel, hurrying back the way he'd come and, once he'd reached the room and the others were filing in behind him, he stepped through the teleporter; when he appeared on the other end he found himself almost nose to nose with the Soldierbot.

"Damn it, didn't I just blow you up?" he grumbled, ducking as a rocket went sailing over his head. "It is about to get very crowded in here."

\-------------------------------------------

When the barrel of the Heavybot's minigun came into view Engineer hefted the shotgun and fired a few times; rather than shells these were modified darts similar to what he'd given Spy and the first two shots made it through to plink harmlessly off the Heavybot's chest while the third disintegrated as the Medicbot behind the Heavybot snapped its shield back up.

He hadn't expected those to stick - the distance and delivery method of a shotgun killed a lot of the dart's penetrating power to begin with without even taking the armoring into consideration - but it had prompted the shield which was what he was after. "Here goes nothing, boys," he muttered, priming one of the little spheres in his hand and chucking at the robots before ducking back down with Heavy behind the miniature shield his sentry was projecting.

It sailed in a neat little arc and struck the robot's shield, then stuck there and began to slowly slide down it like it was sinking in a gel. The Heavybot noticed it as the little sphere began to blink red but it was out of its easy reach; peering around his sentry Engineer had a pretty good view of the Heavybot swinging its minigun into a one-handed grip and jumping forward to grab or slap at the little bomb, but it was too little too late at that point.

The sphere let out a beep, then discharged - brilliant fingers of a reddish orange light darted over the shield's surface and then traveled up the narrower beam that spawned the shield; the orange energy reached the medigun's barrel and disappeared up it with the gun giving a sputtering whine a moment later as the shield collapsed.

\------------------------------------------

Despite his confidence in Engineer's calculations, Medic took several steps back as he watched the little bomb come flying in; when he watched the little light show following impact he couldn't help but smile - things were finally about to get interesting.

"Raus...RAUS!" he shouted as the robot's shield failed.

Scout and Pyro surged forward at the robots as he slapped at the medigun's controls and switched off the cloaking unit, then darted forward to place himself squarely between the robots and Engineer and Heavy, swapping a few cords around to put all available power to the shielding.

Scout meanwhile had sprinted headlong at the Heavybot, one hand plunging into the case on his thigh to pull out several magnetic disk-shaped bombs; he rushed at the Heavybot's minigun, throwing all his weight into it to shove it to the side as the robot attempted to fire on Engineer and Heavy.

The Heavybot's gaze dropped to him and Scout offered him a cheeky grin and a "Hey, what's up?" as he ducked then primed and slapped one of the disks onto the minigun, square on the big white ammunition canister. In response the bot swung the gun to the side to aim a kick at the male.

Scout jumped over the kick and threw himself into a roll, going under the minigun - and banging his head on its underside in the process - and coming up on the other side, sticking a second bomb onto the ammo canister. He had two more bombs but only had time to shove a third one onto the gun's barrel before the Heavybot stepped forward and managed to clip him with a swung fist - it was like getting hit by an eighteen wheeler and Scout went spinning down into the dirt and then scrambling away to avoid being stepped on.

Pyro, meanwhile, had moved to tangle with the Medicbot - the male had charged the robot with axe in hand, landing a heavy overhead chop on the hose that came out of the pack on the robot's back and connected to the medigun. The axe hadn't quite severed the hose but it had cracked it considerably and out of it rushed a purple-tinted liquid that quickly turned to a gas and dissipated before even hitting the ground.

The bot had responded by jerking back and swinging the butt-end of the medigun at him; battering the male even as he battered back, eventually severing the hosing completely before turning and dodging away, giggling madly and signaling wildly at Scout that it was time to run.

Both managed to get clear before the planted bombs on the minigun detonated, the force tearing the now-ruined weapon from the robot's grasp as both males ducked behind Medic's shield, their Heavy stepping up beside Medic with his gun spinning up.

The Heavybot paused then, looking down at its useless weapon, then back at the Medicbot behind it. A moment later it roughly shoved the Medicbot back into the building and moved to block the doorway in with its body. "Doctor, please run."

Behind everyone else, packing up his sentry just enough to make it easier to move, Engineer paused at that - had that thing just...had it actually told its Medic to flee? That was new.

\---------------------------------------------------

The footsteps racing away from him were the only indication he had that the woman was still near as he continuously flickered forward in eight foot intervals, sweeping ahead of him with his ring and gauntlet in the hopes of catching her within the fields and throwing her from her feet.

She was here...she had been here with the men all along. How foolish, how stupid, how...infuriatingly bold - she sought to mock him then? Flaunt her escape directly in his face?

No. No no no. There would be no escape this time. The moment he got hold of her he would snap her neck, collapse her chest cavity, crush her head...whatever method of expiration he could quickly and efficiently manage - there would be no playing around, no taunting, no torment, just an immediate punishment for her defiance. 

Yes, focus on that...focus on the end result, focus... He had a terrible headache setting in, one that made his neck feel tense, almost seized up, and could hear the blood roaring in his ears.

Focus... Focus... Find clarity...

"This would have been much simpler if you had simply died when I first willed it," he said into the "empty" hallway. He moved himself forward and lashed out again, again catching nothing within the fields, feeling a pressure behind his eyes as he strained to try and catch a glimpse, a hint, anything that would give the woman's location away.

The woman's footsteps continued down the hall, passing door after identical door before the hall itself eventually ended at a final door; Zane watched it fly open - it was almost surreal to behold - and he quickly teleported to the doorway in the hopes of catching her in the moment it took for her to swing the door open.

Again, nothing.

He peered around; this room was dusty and dark - this complex had been filled with rooms of spare parts and equipment for the power plant and dam machinery and whatever he had not found useful or at the very least reusable he had consolidated into other rooms for storage. This was one of those rooms and it was cluttered with both machinery parts and spare office furniture, plenty of places to hide...

His gaze drifted down to the floor; it had been weeks since anyone had stepped foot into this room and dust had settled in that time - there were visible footprints now, undeniable tracks.

He couldn't help but smile a bit at that. Foolish woman...

"You cannot hope to hide from me."

With an almost casual flick of his hand he sent the nearest shelving unit, stacked high with plugs and metal fittings, sailing across the room to crash into several other shelves and send their contents flying everywhere.

"What did I ever do to you?" came a voice from somewhere ahead of him and to his left.

"I decreed that all within that city be culled and collected," he replied softly, when the clattering of metal and shifting shelves went quiet. "You defied that."

"So I'm your enemy because I didn't want to die."

"There are none on this earth who can defy me and escape the consequences." He looked around, trying to pinpoint where the voice was coming from...the clutter in this room was working against him, distorting the sound and making it difficult to really narrow down its origin to more than just a general area. He gestured and sent another set of shelves crashing. "I am quite angry...but willing to make your death quick and as clean as possible - I do not want your body destroyed beyond use. I could still use you...your remains will advance my work."

There was a sharp bark of laughter, still from ahead of him somewhere. Moving further into the room he tilted his head this way and that, his headache coming back with a sudden surge of pain that actually sent brilliant lightning-like ghostly images floating across his vision; he felt a bit queasy at the pain and licked his lips, still tasting blood as he inhaled deeply and swallowed a bile-tainted belch.

"I feel ill...you waste my time and delay what cannot be stopped."

He sent several more shelves and a pair of stacked desks crashing across the room and was satisfied when he heard a pained grunt.

"Ah...there you are..."

He lifted another desk and slammed it down into that general area and was rewarded with the appearance of a huge smear in the dust on the floor as something dodged away; shifting, he moved the desk after the smear, swiping it from side to side and noting something invisible slamming into a stack of office chairs ahead of the desk's path.

In one swift movement he dropped the desk and shifted the field, grabbing at where the chairs were and dragging everything within that area forward, a small smile working across his face as a twin set of marks in the dust appeared. After a moment to gauge where within the field the woman was, he narrowed its grasp and let the chairs and other random objects drop to the floor, sighing and shaking his head. So much time wasted, but now...

"It ends. Now."

"Look me in the face when you kill me you bastard!"

He tilted his head, considering - he could only imagine the struggling as he watched the tracks in the dust take on a more frenzied pace. And such a challenge - was she truly so defiant to the end, or was it born out of fear? Did it even really matter?

A quick and clean death had been promised and so he would deliver that promise, but this final challenge...there would be no satisfaction for him if he could not see her as he ended her. "...yes, I will grant your request. Remove your cloak so that I may see the fear in your eyes as I extinguish your life."

Carefully he loosened the field's grasp to allow a bit of movement and continued to pull her toward him as the cloak slowly faded away...and as she came within arm's reach he had an exceptional, unhindered view of the swinging arm and the knife held in that hand moments before it struck him in the forehead and gouged down through his brow into the eye before becoming caught on the bottom half of his eye socket before slipping free and sinking into his cheek.

His mouth opened in a silent scream as pain exploded in his head, the woman dropping out of the field as he reached for his face to claw at the knife still embedded there. She struck at him as he tore the knife free, bashing him aside with a blow from both fists before she darted by him and ran for the door.

Blinded - literally by injury and metaphorically by rage - he spun and seized everything within reach and hurled it at the doorway; she was attempting to close the door behind her and was caught by the door as it blew outward under the force of the odds and ends striking it.

Spurred forward, anger drowning the pain in a wave that made his head throb with each beat of his heart, he staggered out into the hall and toward the pile of debris that, at least for the moment, had the woman trapped partly beneath it.

He raised his hands, sweeping the remains of a desk away to get a clear view of her. "DIE, YOU WRETCH!"

"Couldn't have said it better myself, mate!"

Zane's remaining eye widened as his hand wearing the ring blew apart into a spray of bone fragments and blood; he ducked and brought the ruined hand in toward his chest, choking on bile, blood, and his own breath as a new wave of pain assaulted him.

Up the hall perhaps fifteen feet away one of the mercenaries emerged from a doorway; the man almost seemed to be moving in slow motion, or so it seemed to Zane - this couldn't be happening, not at his moment of victory.

As the man loaded another round into the rifle he held Zane finally had the sense of mind to teleport backward, back into the storage room and out of the man's sight where he bent and retched, coating the floor at his feet in vomit.

"Get up and come on!" he heard the male shout to the woman.

He retched again and raised the remains of his hand to his face - that man had ruined it...he was missing two fingers and his palm was a bloody, open hole.

...the ring was gone.

"No...noo..." he moaned. Sister's ring...gone. GONE!

\----------------------------------------------------

"Get up! You've got to get up and get moving!" Sniper snarled, eyes riveted to the doorway Zane had just disappeared into.

Shiloh was trying to drag herself out of a pile of metal fittings, remnants of chairs, and what looked like shelves. She was bloodied, favoring her right arm, and when she finally kicked her legs free she was limping badly; after a second or two Sniper finally hurried forward to grab her arm and drag her back with him, ducking back into the door he'd come out of.

"What the hell were you thinking?" he barked at her, kicking the door shut before wrapping an arm around her waist and half-carrying, half-dragging her along.

Her breath hitched in her throat and she blinked, eyes watering. "Shit, just...don't, please-"

He shot a glance over his shoulder at the doorway. "Hang on to me and don't let go, we're finding the others and getting the hell out of here."


	31. Ch 31 - Fireworks Show

Her limp turned out to not be as bad as it had seemed; several meters down the hall Shiloh finally managed to get her feet under her and while Sniper still had an arm around her waist to help speed things along he wasn't supporting her quite as much, which was a considerable help as he couldn't walk a straight line while carrying someone while also continuously looking over his shoulder.

"Fill me in."

She took a moment to respond. "He appeared in the room," she panted, grimacing as she stumbled briefly. "Before he appeared an Engineer robot did, then he was there out of nowhere...he threw Miss Pauling across the room, Blu's Soldier got shot, and Spy - Spy tried to take him on but he just...the guy can teleport-"

"-so I've seen," Sniper grunted.

"-he got away and the Engineerbot got Spy, knocked him down. Spy told them he surrendered but got the bot with those darts and his sapper, but then the guy was crushing him under what was left of the robot. I jumped him then...just kept...hitting him until he threw me with something, then I ran out the door and he followed."

"You have a reckless streak the width of a bloody continent." Sniper shot another glance over his shoulder again as they rounded a corner - no sign of Zane following them...yet, anyway.

She let out a sort jittery laugh. "What was I supposed to do, stand there and watch him kill people?"

"You didn't think to shoot the asshole?"

"Blu's Soldier took my shotgun, and I was 'asked' to give my revolver to someone competent."

Sniper fixed her with a glare. "What bloody goddamn point was there to teaching you to shoot those things if you're just going to give them away?"

"That Soldier about ripped the gun off my back I'll have you know. And, I still had a...knife..." she trailed off, panting and shaking her head. "Which uh, I don't have anymore."

"Why the hell not?"

"I stuck in Zane's face, that's why."

Sniper's response was lost as ahead of them, with a shriek of shattering wood and twisting metal, the hall's ceiling caved in. He spun them both around to find Zane standing dead center of the hall at the corner; Sniper swore loudly and all but threw Shiloh at the nearest wall.

"CLOAK! NOW!"

As he went to aim the rifle froze in his hands, stuck solidly in midair as Zane gestured at it; the man was a damn mess - blood and fluid were leaking from his eye and mingling with the blood pouring from the gash in his cheek, his shattered hand was held tightly to his chest, and he swayed on his feet as he took two steps forward before clenching his gauntlet-bearing fist and making a pulling motion.

The rifle was torn from Sniper's hands and sent skidding across the floor toward Zane only to continue passed him and come to a stop against the wall behind and to the man's left, then moments later Sniper himself was clenched inside an invisible field and lifted from his feet.

Zane went through a series of motions that were more like full-body spasms that dragged Sniper along in in the field's grip, slamming him from side to side between the walls as he was pulled ever closer to the madman; darkness began to creep in on the edges of his vision with every collision until he was barely aware of that moment when Zane stopped crushing him into the walls.

Lifting his head once he realized he was stationary, Sniper stared ahead at the man then wheezed as the force holding him intensified and crushed the breath out of him; there was a series of alarming pops up and down his spine as Zane smiled widely-

Sniper was dropped so abruptly he was suddenly flat on his back on the floor without any recollection of having fallen, left staring at the ceiling as he sucked in breath after noisy breath. In a daze he rolled to his side and onto his knees, using the wall to leverage himself up straighter and press a hand to his head, fighting to stay conscious; audible over the throbbing noise in his ears was a clatter of wood on linoleum as a segment of collapsed ceiling bounced across the floor and from behind Sniper came a second chunk sailing by him to narrowly miss Zane's shoulder.

Turning his head just enough to glance back toward the pile of ceiling debris he could see another piece of something - metal this time? - rise into the air, briefly disappear, then reappear several feet away as it flew through the air toward Zane. The man somehow had the focus to sidestep it before lifting his remaining hand and clenching it in the air in front of him; there was another shriek of shattering metal and wood, and a cracking of concrete, and more of the ceiling tore free and began pelting the area in front of the first collapsed section.

There was a pained cry and the heap of debris shifted as something heavier than concrete segments struck it.

Swallowing hard as the world shifted and spun slightly in his vision Sniper shoved himself to his feet, one hand dropping to his belt with his fingers lightly curling around a handle-

-knife.

He fumbled his kukri off his belt and used his free hand to shove himself away from the wall, involuntarily snarling as he launched himself at the man.

Zane turned, the suspended debris falling as he released it and turned to face the charging Australian; Sniper swung as the man dipped his head back and thrust his hand forward. 

There was the slightest feeling of resistance that traveled up Sniper's arm as he swung - had he hit? Had the blade found its mark?

He couldn't be certain, and a fraction of a second later he was seized by the field again and ripped forward off his feet with the momentum slamming him into the wall across the hall; the darkness he'd been trying to fight off rose up and overcame him - he was already unconscious by the time his body hit the floor.

\---------------------------------------------

After his initial duck Soldier found himself considering his very limited options - he could always return fire, but the robot's proximity to both himself as well as those that would momentarily appearing behind him would only end in collateral damage. There was the option of charging the robot and grappling with it but it was highly likely the thing could overpower him with ease.

He supposed he could also just jump back through the teleporter...or, he could if there wasn't a small army lined up to come through it behind him.

Well...nothing else to do about it.

He made his choice and, screaming at the top of his lungs, dropped his launcher and charged.

The robot must not have expected to be rushed - Soldier felt it was entirely too easy to close the distance between them and slam his shoulder into the robot's midsection but he only made it a few steps before the robot got its legs back under it and dug in against the pushing. Despite the close quarters the robot was actually trying to maneuver its rocket launcher around the human to... Soldier supposed even firing it directly at their feet would do considerable damage to him, and firing straight down was about the only way to hit him as well; he locked one arm around the robot's middle and used the other to blindly swipe and grab for the launcher, still throwing his weight forward as he shoved.

"Drop it you good for nothing bucket! I will show you the meaning of fighting with honor!"

The robot did indeed drop the launcher then, only to grab Soldier by the belt and shoulder and bodily heave him away to land in a pile of shattered Scoutbots.

"I was not expecting you to actually listen."

As Soldier scrambled to get his feet under him in an effort to roll out of the pile of robot remains from the far side of the room - decidedly not from where Soldier had just come from - there was a rhythmic, familiar 'thump' noise, followed moments later by a rain of grenades. As things began exploding in close proximity to him Soldier stopped trying to roll out of the robot pile and instead tried to shuffle things in front of him to absorb the explosive forces, being peppered with shrapnel - some of it heated and very unpleasant - but managing to keep all his limbs intact.

The Soldierbot took the brunt of the grenade volley however; it had already been lightly damaged when Soldier detonated that ammunition crate in its face, with dents and holes punched into its armor and one glowing eye broken and gone dark. The grenade shower only added to the damage, forcing the bullet holes wider and with grenade debris lodging itself into the pivoting joint of the robot's left hip.

With one of its legs grinding against the casing debris and its movement momentarily hindered, the second volley of grenades knocked it over completely; Soldier stumbled out of the pile of scrapped robots and went to run for his launcher only to skid to a halt as one of Blu - a very tall, beefy man, someone he did not recognize - came charging out of the hall from the direction of the teleporter with the launcher in hand.

"Fire, soldier! Fire fire!" Soldier shouted, throwing himself into a dive that led into a roll to give the man a clear lane of fire.

Soldier actually felt the heat of the rocket's propulsion as the shots went over his head, angled down at the robot. In the wake of a final grenade volley Demoman came charging across the room to grab Soldier by the collar and haul him off to the side and to his feet.

"About damn time you showed up."

"Hey, I was handling my robot doppelganger. About damn time you took care of that Engineerbot!" Demoman snorted. "...you DID take care of it right? I'm just about out of ammo."

"It was handled. Good timing on the return, private." Soldier turned around and dusted his hands and arms off, sending tiny bits of metal raining to the floor. "I request you do not fire those things so near to me in the future. I may not have a pile of cannon fodder to shelter me."

"You're in one piece you big wuss, how about next time you don't drop your weapon, hey?"

Soldier grunted and strode away from him, moving up to stand beside the Blu member. "I'll take it from here, soldier." The Blu gave up the launcher without complaint, then Soldier - flanked on one side by Demoman and on the other by yet two other members of Blu, one with a shotgun and one carrying a revolver - stomped up toward the Soldierbot.

The Blu had managed to hit it not quite dead on, but squarely enough that it had torn a large jagged hole in the robot's side midway between its armpit and hip, revealing circuitry and inner workings. As Soldier and the others approached the bot turned its head to look at them from where it lay on its back.

"Ah, ah, don't move," Soldier admonished it when it went to lift its launcher over its body. "We've got you on the ground, son - nothing can save you now so just save yourself the time."

The robot's launcher fell to the floor beside it with a quiet clank, and the robot blinked its eyes at them twice. "Fighting to my last...a death with honor."

Soldier snorted. "Robots know nothing of honor." Without another word he raised his own launcher and began firing; the Blu members and Demoman joined him, reducing the robot to a blasted, smoking wreck laying in a shallow crater in the concrete.

Blowing out a loud sigh, Soldier nodded at the wreckage. "Good job, men. What else is left?"

Demoman jerked a thumb toward the other doorway. "The others ought to be outside still - odds are we've got the Heavy and Medicbots to handle yet..." Turning to survey the room, Demoman followed that up with a laugh. "We did get the Sniperbot too though, plus half the bloody ceiling it looks like!"

Soldier spun on a heel and glanced around; not twenty feet away and off to the side of the doorway that led back toward the teleporter was a robot partly pinned, partly crushed, under a section of the catwalk that had detached from the ceiling and fallen. There was still a section clinging to the walls above them - and actually, weren't some lights up there missing? - so the entire structure almost formed a climbable wall up to a single door he could somewhat see from where he stood. After a moment he shook his head and gave the Sniperbot a once-over, grinning a bit at the blasted apart head. "It would seem our Sniper is the better man."

"Giggle later guys," came a call from the hallway. "We've got missing team members and a missing target to track down." Demoman and Soldier looked over in time to see Pauling cautiously emerging from the hall, still limping and giving the room a quick glance before shooting a look back behind her. "Get everyone armed - we're going to find Red's Medic first, then-"

She was interrupted as, its entry heralded by metal feet clanking against the floor, the chrome-clad Medicbot came running into the room. It spied them, skidded to a halt, and held its arms up.

"Oh no. No," it intoned, slowly beginning to back up the way it'd come.

Faster than anyone in the room could get their weapons up and aimed something struck the bot from behind and sent it tumbling to the floor with a scattergun rolling away from the impact site; out of the jumble Scout sprang out, looking around in a frenzy to locate his dropped weapon as the Medicbot backed away, scooting along on its hands and backside.

"Wait. Please. Do not destroy me."

Before they had a moment to respond or move the sound of additional running feet came pounding down the hallway and seconds later in a charge led by Pyro came Heavy and Medic, with Engineer bringing up the rear.

"There it is!" Heavy shouted, a fierce grin on his face. "You cannot escape us!"

The robot froze in place and lifted an arm in front of it in a defensive manner. "PLEASE. Wait!"

Heavy's minigun was already swinging into position and released a spray of bullets that struck the robot in its side; the Medicbot let out a cry and struggled to move away from the gun's immediate line of fire before throwing itself flat and trying to shield its head with its arms.

"Hang on, hang on now," Engineer shouted over the minigun's noise, slapping Heavy on the shoulder a few times to get the man's attention. "Don't break it too much, I want enough left to take apart."

The room went silent again as Heavy allowed his gun to slow to a stop; the mercenaries moved up to ring the robot, none attacking it as Engineer waved at them all to wait.

The robot's arms were sparking and hardly functional, perforated by bullets, and the body and head beneath them were dented and punctured in some places; Engineer bent down and used the toe of a boot to nudge the robot, and stepped back as, with a shudder and an audible whining noise, the Medicbot lifted its head.

"Please stop. Further damage will destroy components beyond recovery. I do not wish to die."

Engineer tilted his head, one hand raising to scratch at the back of his neck as he recalled that, only moments ago, the Heavybot had told its Medicbot to run...and now this one was begging for its life? Robots didn't do that. 

The robot turned its head slowly to regard the ring of men around it. "I have seen you destroy my brethren. I know I am overpowered and helpless as it is. I cannot stop you from destroying me but I am pleading with you to not take that action."

"Since when do robots beg?" Scout asked with a snort. "We're not actually listening to this thing are we?"

"Robots don't beg, Scout," Engineer said. "And they don't tell other robots to run, either."

The bot's eyes flickered again, one going out entirely for several seconds before sputtering to life again. "I am no mere robot, nothing at all like the smaller ones I lay among. I think, I can learn, I know fear. I am very fearful of you and do not wish for my existence to end. I am willing to do what I must to ensure my survival."

Miss Pauling elbowed her way through the wall of men, limping up beside Engineer to peer down at the bot. "Where's Zane?"

"My master? I do not know. I can tell you where my master's quarters are and how to enter them however."

"Do that," Pauling said, lowering her revolver. "Tell us everything you can."

"And you will let me live?"

"Hey moron, robots ain't alive," Scout cut in. "Come on guys, we're not seriously trusting this thing are we?"

"I have to agree, Miss Pauling," Demoman spoke up then. "These things have been trying to kill us all afternoon. I don't trust this bloody bot any more than I'd trust Mann."

"I know, Demo, Scout..." Pauling inhaled and exhaled, turning to face the mercenaries. "But if it helps us find Zane it might be worth the risk."

The robot's head slowly dipped to the ground, the whining noise ceasing as a dark fluid began to leak out of its neck joint. "I understand mistrust. I understand many emotions - fear, loss, nervousness. I also understand betrayal, which I will commit if it means I survive."

"Then where's your master's quarters?" Miss Pauling prompted.

"Not far from here, and you will need me to access them," the bot said, to a chorus of disapproving noises from the men. "Move me to a computer terminal and connect me to it - I can unlock the doors barring the way and disable any remaining robots within this facility."

As the robot had been talking - and as the men around him jeered, discussed, and argued amongst themselves - Engineer had been quietly considering and planning; the Heavybot had told the Medicbot to run, the Medicbot was bargaining for its life...had any of the other robots shown odd behavior? These things were obviously more advanced than the regular robot fodder they were used to, and if the entire Blu team had had their collective skills transferred into these robots, had maybe...more than that made it in?

He held up a hand and waited a few moments for the chatter around him to mostly die down. "All right robot, say I let you stay intact. What then?"

The pool of oily fluid continued to grow under the robot's prone form, and the bot itself was silent for some time before answering. "My logic circuits appear damaged so I cannot give a fair assessment of what I can do in the future beyond the sum of my knowledge and my self being traded for my continued life."

Pauling put a hand on his arm then. "Engineer, we're short on time here..."

Engineer nodded. "All right then... Let's get this thing to a computer and get that door open, then we've got a manhunt to handle."

The robot remained silent as the mercenaries sorted themselves out: Medic moved among them with the medigun, patching the worst injuries but leaving superficial ones alone to save power and wear and tear on the gun; once mended the men spread out and scavenged weapons and ammo from the discarded remains of the robots in the room, then with Engineer on one side and Heavy on the other they lifted the Medicbot and backtracked with it through the teleporter to the stasis room. 

Most of the mercs, Red and Blu both, broke away to hurry after where Shiloh had rushed away; Pauling, both team's Engineers, and Javier remained in the stasis room with the robot.

The Engineers shifted the robot toward the middle of the console, Blu's Engineer pulling open a front panel as Engineer himself bent down to stare the bot in the face. "All right robot, moment of truth - get that door open and you'd better not set off any alarms."

"I will not jeopardize my chance at survival," the bot replied. "Open my chest panel and look for the silver-lined port with an eight-pronged socket, then locate the matching cord within the console."

\-----------------------------------------------------------------

The following hours were something of a blur to Sniper.

He recalled waking in a heap in the floor, face pushed up against the wall in front of him and with no way to tell how long he'd been out; everything ached and the world swam as he'd rolled over to his stomach and crawled away from the wall using his elbows to pull himself along. 

At first he'd been panicked when he saw he was alone in the hallway, but after several minutes of his heart attempting to break through his ribcage he remembered how he had shouted for Shiloh to cloak, remembered debris disappearing and reappearing as she'd thrown it. Where was she...?

It took him several minutes to crawl to the pile of ceiling debris, then several minutes more of blind groping amongst the pile before his hand met with one of her boots; he cut his forearm open on a jagged bit of metal as he ran a hand up her leg to her side before he fumbled at her neck and finally got his fingers on her pulse.

Alive.

A moment later Sniper had ripped the battery off her side and disabled the cloak, revealing one very battered woman laying amongst the wood and concrete, out cold but breathing. 

Shiloh was here, Zane was not, and at least at the moment she and Sniper were alive...how long that would last was anyone's guess but for a very brief moment Sniper dropped flat to the floor and just focused on breathing and trying to ignore the dizziness.

Some time later he found himself grateful that it was his own team that ran up to them then, as he hadn't even heard anyone coming - he had been in the process of very slowly dragging Shiloh free of the ceiling cave in without further injuring himself or her, and it was an absurd relief to simply let his teammates carry him off as the others took up the task of collecting Shiloh.

At some point in the journey away from the collapsed hallway he'd passed out again and stayed out until...now.

He was flat on his back on a hard concrete floor and had no clear idea where he was, his only clues being he could hear a man's voice carrying on what sounded like a one-sided conversation, with Scout's and Pauling's voices occasionally chiming in.

Everything still ached but either he'd been mended or enough time had passed that his body had become dulled to the pain; turning his head slightly made the skin on the side of his head pull, and he weakly lifted a hand to his ear to find it mostly whole again - the little part of the ear that curved over at the top was not as pronounced as it probably should have been but the flesh and cartilage had drawn back together and he supposed someone had cleaned the blood away as well as his fingers came away clean.

Very slowly, moving inch by inch, he leveraged himself into a sitting position and looked around.

They were in a small room that smelled of oil and gunpowder - probably somewhere near where they'd fought - and Sniper was not alone; five feet from him Spy sat against a wall silently smoking, his shirt off with his chest and forearms wrapped in heavy bandage. The man nodded at him when he realized Sniper was looking his way, and Sniper nodded back; next to Spy was a man he didn't recognize but could only assume was a Blu member based on the man's stained blue slacks. He was also shirtless but not bandaged and appeared to be asleep.

Next to him was a large man - yet another Blu Sniper guessed - with eagle tattoos and bandages; all of them were lined up neatly along the wall with enough space between them that minor movements in sleep wouldn't bring them into contact with each other.

But where the hell was...

He looked away from the line of injured men and toward the center of the room where he could see Pauling and Scout sitting at a small table, their backs to Sniper as they watched a platinum-haired man tending to Shiloh; she was sitting up and he was talking animatedly to her, smiling and laughing as he gently guided her right arm through a series of movements and stretches.

He watched that in silence a moment, letting it sink in that they'd both survived and he hadn't just dreamed that bit up in the hallway, before he let himself slump back down to the floor.

"Did we get him?"

Spy made no movement beyond what was required to smoke. "Yes...someone did."

"We got him? Really got him?"

"Yes, Sniper, someone got him - a blade to the throat, clipped his jugular. We found him slumped in his quarters across a computer, soaked in his own blood." The Frenchman continued to smoke steadily in silence until he finished the cigarette, then flicked the smoldering end away. "Was it you who removed his hand and slit his throat?"

"Yeah, mate...that was me," Sniper replied, turning his head just enough to look over at him. "He had her trapped, wasn't about to let him kill her."

"Mm, yes..." Spy murmured. "That would have been unfortunate."

"Did anyone...?"

Spy sniffed. "Die? No. Reckless but heroic...she distracted him from killing us in the stasis room."

Sniper nodded and went silent - it was taking effort to keep talking, what little energy he had draining away as his body insisted on quite loudly informing him of every ache and pain. "Where's everyone?"

"Some are securing the facility, the others are with our Medic and Engineer. We have apparently gained an unusual asset that they are taking full advantage of...they are currently plundering the treasure trove of information that was stored away within Zane's quarters."

"Right," Sniper sighed, letting his eyes droop shut. "Just so long as we all survived..."

"No one fell in our battle, Sniper, you may rest easy."

\------------------------------------------------

"You're sure you have no idea what machine he meant?"

The Medicbot was slumped in the middle of the room, its ruined arms removed and tossed aside, and it didn't even bother trying to track the movements of the men in the room with it. "I apologize but no - all I can tell you is he claimed to have perfected it."

Engineer was leafing through the pages of what looked like a journal - it was filled with ramblings, scratched out notes in margins, drawings and schematics and measurements...Zane had a fairly extensive collection of physical journals as well as a vast amount of stored information - or so Blu's Engineer was claiming from where he stood at the blood-soaked computer - with all of it medical or engineering in nature and all seemingly having to do with grafting machines to flesh or using machines to repair flesh. It was...well, at first glance, it was pretty insane and some of it Engineer couldn't even begin to decipher.

"What was it supposed to do?"

The robot took a moment to reply. "I apologize but I do not know. There are several blocks of my memory storage that have been damaged - it may be I did possess this knowledge but it has been destroyed."

Engineer snorted a bit at that. "And you're not just saying that to keep from telling us?"

"No. I know what lying is and I am not purposely withholding truth. I recall his mentioning of the machine but I do not recall what it is for."

"Try again, real hard."

The robot's eyes went dark as a soft whirring sound came from its head; as Engineer watched there were a few stray flashes of light visible through one of three bullet holes in the robot's head - that the thing could function and speak at all rather surprised him, never mind how...well, human it seemed... - and finally the eyes flared back to life and the robot let out an electronic buzz, the voice emitted much more rigid and deeper in tone as it spoke.

"Error. Damage extensive and requested sectors are unavailable. Unit requests immediate rep-" The bot's voice cut out, the eyes blinked, then the robot seemed to shake its head. "Apologies. Attempts to force connections within the damaged sections caused automatic repair protocols to activate. I cannot access what may have been in that memory section."

Engineer looked over his shoulder to Medic and Blu's Engineer. "Guess we do this the old fashioned way, then. We'll pack this junk up and take it with us to sort through."

Medic was grinning and almost giddy over whatever he was seeing in the papers he was looking through. "Oh, this brilliantly mad man - such a grasp on anatomy and the inner workings of the body! I shall greatly enjoy perusing this madness."

"Don't get too excited, doc," Engineer chuckled. "Some of this is pretty damn insane."

"Oh but Engineer, that is what is so interesting about it!"

Chuckling, Engineer moved back over to the bot, squatting down. "All right, robot. How do I safely turn you off?"

The robot stiffened and jerked away from him, falling over backwards. "What? I have done everything you asked!"

"I didn't say I was going to destroy you or anything, I just want to shut you off. You're damaged, right? Running power through something that's broken is a real good way to break it even worse."

"How do I know you will turn me back on? How do I know this is not a trick?"

Engineer reached up to take off his helmet and run a hand across his head, wiping off the sweat and drying his hand on his coveralls. "Well partner, I guess this is where we teach you about trust."

"I know what trust is and you do not have mine with such a request."

"Look, you can either tell me how to safely shut you off, or you can do it yourself, or I can just tear you apart right here and take you home in pieces. What's it going to be?"

"You will turn me back on?"

"I will turn you back on. I might even repair you if you keep behaving."

The robot's eyes sputtered and went dark, and many other little noises that Engineer had been hearing all went silent as the robot powered itself off.

"You are not actually keeping that dang thing, are you?" Blu's Engineer asked as Engineer straightened and stood up.

Engineer shrugged. "I might, I might not. It proved to be useful - I'll at least be keeping everything inside its head, see what's actually stored in there...damn unsettling, a robot claiming it can think for itself." He stretched and headed for the doorway. "Come on boys, plenty of time to get to this later - this room stinks to high heaven and I'm actually wanting to see Pyro light that mother hubbard's remains up like a backyard barbecue. Let's get some fresh air and a fireworks show."


	32. Ch 32 - Cover Story

Sniper awoke feeling stiff as a board and still feeling like he'd just had the stuffing beaten out of him, but at least his head and his vision were clear. As he sat up he saw the persons in the room with him had changed with the sole exceptions of Shiloh - she was still where she'd been sitting earlier with Blu's Medic, curled into a ball and with an arm over her head asleep - and Spy, who had not moved from where he sat nearby beyond slumping slightly further down the wall.

"How long was I out?"

Spy glanced briefly at his watch. "Five hours, give or take. You were by far the worst injured of us...at least, the worst injured in the fighting and not prior to that."

Sniper grunted as he shifted and stretched his legs out, rubbing one hand against his forehead and giving his ear another tactile once over. "Bloody bastard was ramming me into the damn walls, I'm amazed he didn't snap my damn neck on accident." He rubbed his eyes and continued to stretch himself out bit by bit, silent for several minutes. "You in one piece?"

Spy smiled faintly, only his eyes moving as his gaze flicked down to the bandaging around his chest. "Relatively. The good doctor is determined to not touch his medigun again until all components have cooled...those of us with remaining injuries must wait. I do not fault his logic but I cannot say I care for sitting here in pain for hours on end, waiting."

"Eh, a little pain is good for you, mate - can't be too dependent on that thing."

"That is easy for the man who has slept through his agonies to say."

With a quiet chuckle Sniper licked his lips and noted the bottom one was swollen and had several cracks in the skin, his mouth immediately taking on the taste of blood as the simple act of licking them broke them open again. "Nothing stopping you from sleeping."

Spy snorted. "If I lay down breathing becomes near impossible. If I remain upright breathing is easier but sleep is impossible."

"You didn't seem to have a problem after Zane about throttled you dead."

"Oxygen deprivation is not the same as resting, Sniper."

With another grunt Sniper got his legs under him and pushed himself to his feet, stumbling a bit as his sense of balance sorted itself out; he stepped over the legs of a slumbering Blu near the door and left the room, heading down the hallway to where he remembered a washroom to be, or at least where it had been prior to Zane taking over the facility.

The room was where he remembered it being but was cluttered with stored odds and ends from, he assumed, other places around the facility. When he'd cleared a pathway through boxes and crates he found the toilets were gone but the sinks were still there and he busied himself with rinsing his mouth out and carefully poking at and cleaning the tears in his lip - they were akin to having very chapped lips and superficial at best, he just didn't care much for the taste of blood that would be lingering until they'd closed up again.

After that he just splashed cold water on his face a few times and stood there, hands braced on the sink letting the water drip off. It had been awhile since he'd been faced with a very real and present threat of being overpowered and killed. The robots that Mann threw at them in droves were pushovers, stupidly easy to dispatch, and for that matter he wasn't usually on the front lines to begin with - was he getting rusty, or soft? Maybe he'd forgotten what an actual threat was like.

Though it really didn't help one damn bit that this fight had been a bit...different, from the sort of fighting he was accustomed to.

He knew his team - their habits, their skills, knew their breaking points. It had taken years to reach this point of synergy but it was there and he trusted it and trusted them to be able to handle themselves. He knew what they were likely to do in given situations, there was very little they could do in a combat situation that would take him off guard.

Shiloh, on the other hand - she was a wild card on top of everything else she embodied...

He blinked and seemed to only just now notice his own hands there, gripping the sink so tightly his knuckles were white. With a deep breath he willed himself to relax and let go; bringing Shiloh to this mess had been a bad idea from the start and they'd almost lost her, as he knew they would. You don't bring the priority target with you to a fight, especially someone as un-

-no...that wasn't fair. Goddamn but she'd had a trial by fire, it wasn't fair to say she was entirely untested. Untrained? Untrained was a better way to phrase it. She wasn't trained, and a handful of afternoons of "training" would not and had not cut it.

She had one hell of a fighting spirit though, he had to admit that.

He rubbed his hands down his face, sluicing off the remaining water droplets. A refusal to go quietly and an incredible reckless streak punctuated by a bloody damn lot of luck...

Drying his face fully against a sleeve he left and went in search of the rest of his team, falling in to help them search every nook and cranny of all buildings at the dam for any hidden surprises, his steps eventually taking him on a detour back up to the hallway that he and Shiloh had faced down Zane in. His rifle was laying against the wall where it'd been thrown and he was pleased to see that beyond a crack in the scope's front-most lens the rifle's damage was primarily cosmetic, with scratches and dents in the stock and a small flattened spot on the bulb-like end of the bolt handle. There were splotches of blood on the walls up here, clearly marking his path of midair travel, and he could only shake his head at them with a quiet feeling of amazement over not having suffered worse for what he'd just gone through.

He then located and picked up his dropped kukri and clipped it back to his belt before he backtracked a bit and found the pile of crap Shiloh had been buried under when he'd burst out of the doorway, and despite himself he chuckled as he spied a knife laying against the doorjamb on the other side of the pile - she'd mentioned she'd put a knife in Zane's face, that must be the one. It only took him a few moments to skirt the debris and retrieve it, tucking it - still bloodied - into a pocket once he'd worked out how to close it. 

The next hour or two passed quickly as the mercenaries finished a complete sweep and determined that there weren't any overlooked robots anywhere; Sniper and a handful of others then moved in to the main room where most of the fighting had happened and began to sort through the robot remains to sort out weapons and ammunition that were worth hanging on to, the others sorting themselves into a supply run group and a sort of impromptu security detail.

Some time later, sweating and aching, Sniper leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, a sizable pile of scavenged weaponry at his feet. "Anyone seen our Medics or Engineers?"

Scout glanced up from where he was reassembling a scattergun from the pieces of other damaged ones. "Uh, last I checked they were cutting the crazy guy apart. Think the other two eggheads are sorting through the crap they found in the guy's room."

"They don't expect we're going to haul that corpse back with us, do they?" Sniper asked sourly. "I don't even think he deserves a shallow bloody grave."

"Nah, nah, I think the Pyros want to cremate him but then what don't they want to cremate?" There was a quiet ping as a spring somewhere in the chamber of the gun in Scout's lap broke free and went sailing out of sight; Scout blew out a sigh and began hunting through the rest of the broken ones for a replacement. "Don't even see why we're doing this, half this crap is scrap at best - I've heard of saving money but I don't think I want a re-purposed gun in my hands you know? Ammo is fine, you can't screw up a bullet just by dropping it but I'm piecing guns together here. Hell, this one here is five and a half guns at this point."

Sniper was only half-listening as the male rambled, and eventually pushed himself from the wall and headed back toward the room they were using as their infirmary. He paused in the doorway, hand halfway to the pocket with Shiloh's knife in it, and raised his eyebrow at the slight rearrangement in the room. Spy had moved over to Shiloh's side of the room and she was now sitting with her back to the wall and knees drawn up, the male was seated upright leaning back against her legs with the back of his head resting on the tops of her knees. 

After a moment or two Shiloh noticed him in the doorway and gave him a warning look; he smirked and came over, removing the knife and offering it to her silently. She rolled her eyes and took it, putting it beside her on the floor, then crossed her arms over her stomach.

"Not a word."

"You keep being nice to Spy people are going to think you like him," he said dryly - her voice had been quiet and he dropped his to match hers, grimacing a bit as he lowered himself down to the floor next to her. 

She rolled her eyes and snorted at that, waiting for him to get fully settled before speaking again. "Well, since we're returning lost items, here-" she dropped a hand beside her, on her other side, and a moment later brought up-

He let out a short, quiet bark of a laugh as she handed him his hat. "Would you look at that." He turned it over in his hands a few times, sticking a finger through the bullet hole in the front - it went completely through the hat and if it'd been two inches lower the top of his skull would be missing. "That one about had my name on it."

"Yeah, I uh, I saw that." She shook her head, then rested it against the wall behind her, hand dipping down beside her again and coming up with yet something else. "Anyway, Pyro came in earlier bearing gifts, left your hat with me and also gave me this."

Sniper dropped his hat to the floor beside him and reached over to take the triangular faceplate she held out to him, snorting a bit as he looked at its front, then flipped it over. The outside of it was scratched up some while the inside of it had a network of silver and gold circuits running from the eye sockets and mouth slit back toward where he assumed the plate attached to the robot's head. With a quiet grunt he shook his head, remembering the fight in the mineshaft and recalling the bot's busted eye with a strange clarity as he rubbed a finger around the rim of an eye socket. "Another trophy for you, eh?"

"I guess. I'd say I'd mount it on my wall but I don't have wall," she replied as he handed it back. "I wonder how he got his hands on it."

"His robots probably found it when they were looking for us."

She frowned slightly, nostrils flaring. "Right...that probably should have been the first thing I thought." After a moment or two of staring at the faceplate she set it back down beside her and crossed her arms over her stomach again. "How's it going out there?"

"Everything is clear, it's just sorting and breaking now. And seems our Medics are dissecting Zane."

"Good. I'm glad he's dead, and not just because he wanted me dead. Murdering asshole...someone like that doesn't need to be running around."

He shrugged. "Sad truth of it is, men like him are everywhere. He just wasn't smart enough to keep his hobby under wraps and got caught."

"He had it under wraps until...me," she muttered, shuddering a bit. "If I hadn't seen him or survived that attack, I wonder how long he would have gone before anyone really knew about him... How many towns did he wipe out, you think?"

"Hard to say, there's a lot of little towns in the Badlands and outlying areas, blink and you can miss them. We should done here soon though, I'd wager. Clean up gets handled by someone else - we're just going to bust some stuff up so Mann can't use it against us in the future, then get the hell out of here. Ought to have you back wandering the desert within a day or two." He offered her a sort of smirk that went unnoticed, Shiloh's gaze steadily dropping down to her legs as he spoke.

She made a little humming noise in her throat when he stopped talking, propping one elbow up on her other arm and resting her cheek in that hand, silent for a long moment. "...is that what comes after this? Do I just get let go then, or...?"

"Couldn't tell you. I'm hoping you are, Pauling would know best - I wonder if she's managed to get back in touch with the Administrator. I get that she probably went to ground to hide from this maniac, but complete radio silence? For all we know he might've gotten her while we were distracted." He blew out a sigh, letting the silence stretch between them. "...got you through it, though. Like I said I would."

With a small huff and a bit of a grin she nodded. "Yeah, you did. Thanks...you know, for that. Thanks. Thought I...yeah, just, thanks. Glad it was you who came busting through that door."

"Uh, yeah..." Sniper cleared his throat, nodded, then pushed himself to his feet again. "I better get back out there, at least before he wakes up and accuses me of being sentimental," he snorted, jerking his thumb toward Spy - the male hadn't budged at all since Sniper had entered the room.

"I...think he's pretty much out cold, but that's probably a good idea."

"Why's he laying on you anyway?"

"Medic is taking his damn time fixing him up - he said laying down was causing stabbing pains that kept him from breathing properly, and he kept sliding over each time he nodded off. With his head on my knees he can't go anywhere and he's not putting as much weight on his ribs."

With a snort Sniper headed toward the doorway. "Again, someone's going to think you like him if you keep being so nice."

"How's that different from being nice to, say, Soldier? Or Javier? Or you, even?"

"Look at where being nice to me got you. I'm heading back out."

"Pfft, go ahead then, I'll continue to babysit your hat."

He paused in the doorway and glanced behind him to see she was holding his hat suspended off a finger, smirking at him. Pressing his lips together he stomped out the door, her quiet laugh following him out.

\-----------------------------------------------

It was stupidly late - or very early, depending on how you chose to look at it - when Miss Pauling crept among the men and roused Shiloh from where she was again curled up in a corner off by herself. She put a finger to her lips to signal silence, then gestured for her to follow her back out of the room and led her through a few hallways, then up some stairs, until she opened a door and stepped back to let Shiloh step in ahead of her into a room that held a large conference table - dusty from disuse - that had an old telephone balanced precariously on one end, its cord barely long enough to reach the socket in the nearest wall.

Once the door was shut behind them Pauling blew out a sigh and dropped into one of the chairs nearest the phone, suddenly looking a lot less energetic than she'd appeared only a moment ago. Shiloh also stumbled her way to a chair and sat down, still drowsy and rubbing at dry eyes.

"What's the problem now?"

"There's no problem, we're just waiting on a phone call," Pauling yawned. "The Administrator finally caught up to us and she wants to speak to you, privately."

Shiloh blinked and sat up a bit straighter, trying to shake the sleep off. "What? Why?"

"I guess we'll find out - or, you'll find out. I won't be in the room beyond answering the phone." Pauling yawned again and took her glasses off, folding them and placing them on the table in front of her before massaging her temples. "I won't lie, I honestly have no clear idea what she'd want aside from dictating what to do with you."

"Should I be worried?"

"I really couldn't say, but I'll openly admit part of my job is body disposal."

"...what the hell else do you do?"

"The less you know about me and about TFI the better your outcome will be."

Shiloh blew out a sigh and hunched down in the chair, arms crossed and legs pulled up and wedged between herself and the table in front of her, feet dangling off the floor. She supposed she knew this conversation would happen eventually, but she'd at least hoped for a day or two to possibly formulate a plan to escape if she had to... 

Pauling stayed as she was, rubbing her temples with her eyes closed, and didn't stir beyond that until the phone rang; the ringer was set to a quiet volume but in the silent room it was jarring, both women jumping in their seats before Pauling reached over to lift the phone from its cradle.

"Hello...yes, she's here."

Without another word Pauling held the phone out to Shiloh, then stood and collected her glasses in one smooth movement before she left the room.

Taking a deep breath, Shiloh placed the phone to her ear. "...hello?"

A prim, firm voice was on the other end. "Miss MacKenna."

"Yes - uh, ma'am."

There was a quiet snort. "In the interest of saving time I will be direct. You were instrumental in ridding me of an old enemy - I do not often offer praise but based on what I have seen and been told, your performance was adequate."

Shiloh rubbed at an eye, the silence stretching on until she caught on that she was being prompted to respond. "...thank you, ma'am." ...wait a moment, that she'd seen...?

Before Shiloh could fully work through the implication of that realization, the woman continued. "Yes. Now...it is true that your involvement in my business matters was entirely involuntary, but we do have...a problem, as it were."

"A...problem."

"Yes, Miss MacKenna. You see, I prefer to keep my business matters private. Exceptionally private, in fact. You know far more than I am comfortable with even though what you know may seem utterly insignificant to you."

Shiloh bit her lip as the woman went silent again. "I- I uh, see."

"However..." The woman trailed off, and Shiloh had the sudden mental image of a cat smiling down at a trapped mouse. "I am willing to see if we can come to an understanding, you and I. I am told you had no real combat skills before becoming entangled with my men, is this correct?"

"Yes - well, mostly - I-" Shiloh pinched the bridge of her nose, squeezing her eyes shut and trying to organize her thoughts before lightly bumping a fist against the chair's arm under her. "Before I met them I knew how to throw a punch, and I'd shot a gun before..."

"But you'd had no formal training?"

"No, ma'am."

"I see. It would then seem you have a knack for picking up new skills quickly. It is a talent I could make use of, so allow me to get to the point."

Shiloh heard a soft tearing noise and looked down to see she was subconsciously clawing the chair's arm and scratching small tears in the old leather of the chair's arm. Oh boy, here we go...

"I am going to make three offers to you. You may choose any of the three that appeals to you most, but I want it understood that the specifics of the offers are not negotiable."

"Yes, ma'am..."

"Very good. Now, the first option - employment. You sign a five year contract and work for me as a courier and messenger. Everything you require will be provided on top of being paid a very generous salary. At the end of your five years we shall see where we are and re-negotiate the terms of your contract if need be."

"...what exactly do you mean by being a courier or, or a messenger?"

"I would think it is fairly self-explanatory."

Shiloh waited for further explanation but the woman didn't elaborate further. "Um, all right, what's the next option?"

There was the slightest pause. "In the interest of fostering complete honesty between us, I want it known that I know exactly who you are and where you came from, Miss MacKenna."

"...what?" The word was barely more than a whisper, and another uncomfortably long silence fell.

"I have a certain history with your old employer - Madam Zoya is far more than she appears, wouldn't you say?" Shiloh could almost hear the smirk in the woman's words.

After several moments passed Shiloh exhaled loudly, finding she'd apparently forgotten to breathe. "I- how-?"

"As I have said, I have a history with the Madam. The club is a profitable front for several...less than legal activities, shall we say. And I know exactly what she has done to you - you are not the first she has erased from public record, nor will you be the last. It is a favored tactic of hers."

Mundy had been right...she'd brushed off his claim that this Administrator probably had her life story because- he'd been right and she'd just brushed it off-

"Now. Your second option - I cannot let you go wandering free, out of a concern for your personal safety as well as my privacy. I have made many enemies over the years and should any one of them suspect you are somehow connected to me, well...I suppose I don't need to spell out for you, given these most recent events?"

"Nope," Shiloh replied weakly.

"Smart girl. So, here is what I propose. I will relocate you somewhere that you find agreeable, I will reinstate your legal identity, and you will neither leave where I place you nor will you ever attempt to contact me or mine, or speak of us to anyone. Ever. I do not think I need to stress the incredible amount of trust I am affording you, but should it ever be made known that you broke the conditions of this offer..."

She trailed off, her intent painfully clear. 

"Right...ma'am...and the third?"

"A bullet and a shallow grave." Again there was another long silence before she spoke again. "If I may be so bold, let me give you a bit of advice...to assist you in making the choice best suited for you, of course."

\------------------------------------------------------

"Still can't get in through that door?"

Engineer shook his head, rubbing his chin against his shoulder. "Can't even put a damn dent into it. That thing is at least eighteen inches of solid metal, it's not powered and I can't find where power hooks up to it, and I'm plumb amazed this thing hasn't broken through the floor under it."

Spy frowned and moved to lightly rest his fingertips against the door. This was the one area they could not get inside of, and it was the lowest floor that he knew from his previous recon mission that was a Zane-added addition to the facility. "Is there a possibility of getting in through a wall, or perhaps the ceiling?"

"Thought of that, tried it, hit more roadblocks - whatever room is on the other side of this door is pretty damn well protected, looks like its been built to withstand a damn big blast, like a bunker. We're going to need something built to bust a bunker just to get through that door," Engineer sighed, rapping his knuckles on the wall. "Tried looking up power consumption and seems there was a lot going in but nothing coming out not too long ago, but whatever was drawing power isn't doing so now and I can't even find where that power routed through. All I've got is a computer readout saying it happened."

"What do you mean by 'a lot' exactly?"

"Based on the numbers I was seeing, enough power to run a city the size of Sandville for eight hours or so."

Spy's eyes narrowed. "What could possibly be inside here?"

Engineer shrugged. "I've got a guess or two, but no way to prove things either way."

"Care to elaborate?"

"Well," the Texan trailed off, reaching up to take his hat off and scratch the top of his head. "Based on what I've managed to make heads or tails of in Zane's writings and the very little the Medicbot could recall, Zane was building some sort of machine - lots of rambling about some crazy plan to make himself immortal, plus a lot of detail on what he learned from hooking Blu up to those stasis tubes. Might be he was planning to stick himself into some sort of robot hybrid - god knows he was already half clockwork as it was," he added after a moment, shaking his head. "There's still a lot to go through, going to take weeks if not months to make some dang sense of it all...we're already finding places where he contradicts himself on research or probably just plain made stuff up, and to top it off none of it is in any sort of chronological order..."

Spy sniffed slightly, lip curling up into a half-disgusted smile. "Well, the man was mad."

"There's mad, and then there's...well, what we found. Anyway, might be he was building something down there. The Medicbot seems to think Zane was convinced he'd perfected it, but I can't say what he might've been doing or perfecting down there, not until we figure out what the hell he was trying to build and that'll take either figuring out the journals or I might be able to repair that Medicbot and see if there's any retrieving the damaged information. I don't have high hopes for that second part."

"I see..." Spy went silent, mulling that over. It brought up rather revolting thoughts no matter which way he considered it. "What else do you suspect is here?"

Engineer smiled a bit, chuckling quietly. "A good old innocent guess - power reserves. Might be there's just a bunch of storage down there that just store excess power in case something ever cuts out. I remember there being similar deals back home near the oil fields, lots of equipment that would've caused a lot of widespread damage if power cut out at just the right moment. This might be a bit of old fashioned foresight on Zane's part, considering what he was doing here."

"Then why protect this floor so heavily?"

"If that's what's really down there and, you figure it's got to be pretty big considering the hydro-electric system that's here, something like that going off would level this facility, shatter that dam and flood everything downstream, and wipe out the power supply for every city in this region for years, not to mention leave one hell of a crater behind. Zane protecting everything he's built here is just as likely as him protecting one thing he might have built down there."

"I do not feel this is something we can risk on conjecture, my friend."

"I'm aware of that, Spy, but our options here are pretty dang limited. Short of walling this place off and never coming back...I really don't have many other ideas, not without knowing for sure what's on the other side of this door."

Spy sighed, then turned to stride across the wide landing and up the flights of stairs that would return him to the ground level. Two days had already come and gone and they had still not found a way into that room...it did not sit well with him, all things considered. For all they knew there was a doomsday device down there, even though that was as likely as something entirely innocent as Engineer had speculated.

The true problem, he supposed, was deciding how best to go about keeping others away from that door; the thought of something exploding hadn't occurred to him until Engineer had said as much, and now it was a nagging worry at the back of his mind as he walked the hallways. Perhaps it would be best to keep anyone and everyone away from here until they had some idea of what might actually be down there...

A bit too lost in thought, he rounded a corner and bumped into something solid, grunting softly as he stepped back and looked down at what he'd collided with. "Ah, Miss Pauling, my apologies."

Miss Pauling straightened her glasses, set askew by the bump. "No, no, sorry Spy, I was in a hurry. Have you seen Shiloh?"

"When I last saw her she was stepping outside for some fresh air. I believe Scout and Blu's Medic were with her."

"Thanks, I checked outside but didn't see her."

A small smile crossed Spy's face. "Ah, but did you think to look up?"

"Oh, right...she climbs. I didn't think of that when I went out there - I should probably check the dam overlook."

Spy watched as she turned on a heel to hurry off. "You seem rather harried, Miss Pauling - is everything all right?"

She shot him a very brief smile from over a shoulder. "Our ride is here."

Spy's brows furrowed as he uttered an "our?" but Pauling was already moving away at a quick pace.

\------------------------------------------------

Shiloh was seated at the edge of the overlook, flanked on either side by Soldier and by Blu's Medic, the three of them discussing card strategies or something along those lines; around them in groups of two or three were various Red and Blu members, mostly keeping to their own team but with conversation flowing - sometimes awkwardly - between them easily enough.

Sniper was seated back behind everyone else, his back against a short concrete wall, to all appearances keeping a watchful eye on the gathering but truth be told he was looking without seeing much, his mind elsewhere.

Not more than a half hour ago he'd encountered Shiloh in the hallway and she'd asked to speak with him, following him to a quiet corner where she'd shook his hand and said she was declaring him the winner of their little bet since there wouldn't be a chance to follow through on it.

'I've been told my reward for helping you guys is I get to walk out of here alive,' she'd said, avoiding looking at him directly, sighing heavily. 'I can stick around until a driver comes to pick up Miss Pauling, then I'm supposed to start walking east and not stop until I run out of continent.'

She wasn't to speak to anyone about the mercenaries, or ever come back to this side of the Appalachians, or attempt to contact them in the future. If she did, she'd be marked for assassination...

'You've got the training and the years on me, you'd probably have won anyway' was the end of her explanation, along with a smile that wasn't quite a smile, or one that looked genuine.

Sniper was actually fairly disappointed at that, really - there was a part of him that had actually been looking forward to the bet. The idea of being free to stalk someone through the woods who might even give him a challenge had been appealing, and Shiloh herself wasn't bad company...

At the very least he could take a bit of comfort in hearing no one here was going to be putting a bullet in her - she got to leave alive...that was pretty good news, all things considered. 

She'd spent the next day or so conversing with everyone without showing any sign or mentioning anything about what she'd been told, just continuing on as though nothing had changed and if she noticed Sniper pausing periodically throughout the day to check the horizon, well...she didn't mention anything about that either.

Today he was hanging back and just...watching, and waiting. Shiloh still hadn't let on to anyone about her marching orders and imminent departure, or at least not that he could tell; as he leaned and observed, he eventually heard the sounds of feet pounding their way up the metal stairs, and without a word he craned his neck to peer around the short wall to watch the top of Miss Pauling's head getting closer and closer until she finally stepped onto the overlook.

"Lots of stairs, whew," she panted. "Shiloh...Shiloh, our ride just arrived, we need to go."

"...your ride?" Sniper asked, narrowing his eyes. "What're you talking about?"

Pauling glanced down at him with a smile. "It's time to get Shiloh back where she belongs, and the Administrator actually gave permission for us to take a quick road trip back to that base where she had to leave her bags behind. If they're there we'll get them, and if they're not I have the means to assist in replacing them."

"Wait, really?" Shiloh asked, turned around to stare at the woman but still sitting.

Pauling nodded. "It was a little suggestion I had and the Administrator thought it was a good one and approved it. If you're ready to head out..."

Blu's Medic hopped to his feet and offered Shiloh a hand up, smiling when she accepted and pulling her to her feet, then dipping his head to her as she stepped around him. She took several steps then glanced around at the group of men all watching her. "Um...well, all right. I guess this is it, guys - thanks for everything, it was actually kind of fun when I wasn't being shot at or kidnapped. Take care of yourselves, all right?"

There was a quiet chorus of laughter, goodbyes, and gestures - Scout grinned and waved, Soldier offered her a small salute, Demoman tipped the neck of his beer toward her in a sort of toasting motion. She smiled a bit shyly at the attention and ducked her head, then shot Sniper a glance and a small smile, her gaze staying on him for several moments before she moved to follow Miss Pauling back down the considerable number of stairs.

"...you know, she wasn't that bad," Scout said into the silence that followed. 

"I am afraid I still do not know how she came to be with your team," Blu's Medic commented after a moment, returning to where he'd been sitting a moment ago.

Sniper stayed where he was, only half-listening as his team began - in a fairly disjointed and rowdy manner - to detail how she'd been found in a ruined city, the only survivor of one of Zane's robot-led massacres. 

Just like that she was gone, then.

\-----------------------------------------------------------

Shiloh followed Pauling silently and without complaint, her smile having disappeared the moment she was out of sight of the men and the spring out of her step gone as well, more slouching along behind the woman than anything else. 

Parked and left running in front of the power plant was a nondescript car, small and a dark red color, a little four-door something or other that Pauling hurried over to and slid into the driver's seat of. Once Shiloh was in the passenger's seat she immediately threw the vehicle into drive and pulled away, driving in silence until they reached a highway where Pauling blew out a loud sigh.

"All right...this is going to be a very long ride. Do you have a particular kind of music you enjoy?"

Shiloh hardly glanced up as Pauling reached for a radio knob. "...big band stuff, I guess."

Pauling clicked the radio on and sorted through frequencies until she found a station playing jazz music; the music sounded tinny and was a bit fuzzy with static, but Shiloh didn't comment and Pauling didn't search further, and for several minutes they rode with only the music breaking the silence.

Finally, Shiloh slipped down in her seat and propped an elbow on the door, resting her chin in her hand and staring out the window. "...I hate that I lied to them."

"It's for the best," Pauling replied, glancing over toward her with a bit of a smile. "They really can't know where you're going and they also don't need the distraction of a long-distance friendship."

"I...know, it's just... I don't like lying to anyone, especially not to the first people in literal years that I could reasonably call my friends."

"Oh I believe you, and I'm sympathetic, but you have to do what's best for everyone even if sometimes it makes you feel uncomfortable later."

Shiloh snorted. "That would mean a lot more if it were coming from someone who didn't have 'corpse disposal' on their resume."

Pauling grinned. "Try not to think on it too much - oh, and that reminds me. See that envelope on the back seat there?"

Shiloh twisted around to look behind her, seeing a plain manilla envelope sitting on the middle of the back seat. "Yeah. Is that mine, then?"

"It's everything you'll need."

Shiloh grunted and turned around, going back to slouching in the seat. "...did you really mean it that were going to get my things?"

"Not in the slightest, I just needed a cover story for you leaving with me that no one would question."

"Great..." She was silent several minutes more, until she straightened and looked over at Pauling. "Uh, one more thing - where the hell did this car come from?"

Pauling grinned again. "Sometimes that's all a courier does."

"Oh."

\-----------------------------------------------------------

The great bank of screens in front of her was dark - for the moment - and the only light in the room came from the sole lamp sitting on the desk.

Helen finished off her cigarette and dropped the end into a full ashtray, then pressed her fingertips together in front of her face, her elbows propped into divots worn into the arms of the chair she sat in.

There really was some truth in the saying of giving someone enough rope to hang themselves, and she supposed this phone call could be considered overdue; just the thought of having to hear the woman's screechy voice again was almost enough to drown out the thought of how delightful pettiness could be, but with a sniff Helen reached for the phone on her desk and tapped in a number she hadn't called in...hmm, she supposed it was nearly two decades now since she'd last had a reason.

The voice on the other end was disgustingly chipper. "Thank you for calling-"

"-I need to speak to Zhenya. Now," she interrupted. "Tell her is it Helen on the line."

"-yes, right away of course, ma'am."

The line went utterly silent as she waited on hold, idly drumming her fingers against the arm of the chair.

"-da, this is Zoya."

God, that damn voice...shrill yet watery, and with an impossibly thick Russian accent to boot. "Zhenya."

"Ah, yes, Helen. To what do I owe this unpleasant surprise?"

Despite herself, Helen found herself smirking. Wretched old hag... "Correct me if I'm wrong - even though I know I am not - but I do seem to remember you and I had come to an understanding. I have recently had yet another piece of your past come falling into my lap, and do not think I haven't noticed that several of my messengers have been drawing two paychecks in recent years. Care to explain yourself before I crush you into the dirt as usual?"

"You wound me. I have stayed true to terms of agreement-"

"Perhaps to the terms but not to the, shall we say, spirit of our agreement."

There was a loud snort and the sound of someone spitting on the other end. "Spirit, pah. I follow agreement. I keep to my sphere of influence. You insult me with such accusation."

Helen scratched her cheek idly with the nail of her pinky. "And you in turn insult my intelligence, assuming I would not notice or know it was you. That is exceptionally, and dangerously, unwise."

"I care not for threats. I have done nothing wrong."

Helen let out a long sigh through her nose. "Allow me to remind you of a few pertinent facts, Zhenya. You exist because I'm letting you exist. Your pathetic club continues to hide your activities because I have decided not to expose them. You and your son would not even be on this continent if I hadn't assisted you. You owe everything to me, and if you do not cease biting the hand that feeds you I will remove your teeth. Are we understood?"

"Am done berating me?"

A slow smile worked its way across Helen's face as she let the silence settle in, knowing Zoya would not dare hang up.

"One more thing, Zhenya... I really do caution you against continuing to throw away talented individuals just because they will not dance to the tune you force upon them."

At that there was a sudden explosion of Russian, angry and bellowed, and Helen recognized enough of it to grasp the gist of the colorful nature of the tirade. She hung up rather than listen to it, and leaned back in her chair massaging her temples with her fingertips.

There...she'd adequately tipped her hand on what she knew. Zoya would either fall back into line or over-extend again, and if that happened then Helen could remove her from her pathetic, gilded little throne without having to put in the work to maintain her network of contacts overseas.

Oh, the number of headaches she suffered just to save a few loads of paperwork down the line.

\-------------------------------------------

When the Elite Spy finally managed to drag itself to the rear entrance of the facility it found the place dark and utterly empty of anyone save for impressive amounts of broken machinery and busted robots.

It recalled with the unerring clarity of an artificial memory how, when it and its two fellow robots had entered one of the human's bases, the entire building had exploded around them. The Elite Pyro and Scout were destroyed, almost completely, and what was left of them had been buried in the rubble of the booby trapped base. The Elite Spy had been fortunate enough to have been partially sheltered from the worst of the blast by a combination of distance and architecture, and even though it had suffered considerable damage it was still intact enough to drag itself from the rubble.

It had not encountered any human during the five weeks it took to drag itself back to the dam - encouraging since its cloak was malfunctioning and not reliable - but now that it was here it found no signs of its creator aside from the charred remains tossed carelessly into a shallow pit dug in the irrigation ditches on the far, far outskirts of the facility. There were also no signs of human life within the facility itself, though the Elite took notice that its creator's personal quarters had been emptied, all of his belongings stolen.

Someone had been here. Something had happened here. But there were none left alive to tell of it.

There was an insistent feeling in the robot's inner processing, however...a place it was supposed to return to. Parts of its internal workings were too damaged to make sense of it but the robot knew without a doubt that something had called it back here beyond a desperate need for repair.

It went searching through the facility, finding that all equipment that had been left behind was broken beyond use, and there were signs that some equipment and machines had been removed and carted away. There were no places where it could hook itself up for a diagnostic, there was no place to broadcast a call for assistance - and who was left functioning to receive it anyway? - and there were no charging ports left intact.

It stumbled through the hallways until something within its memory banks made one last, sputtering connection: the third floor of the basement. Go there.

It had no idea where the basement stairs were in relation to its current location and it took several hours of painstakingly slow searching to locate the correct ones, but...these stairs led to a door that did not open. Why was it supposed to come here if it could not get in to where it should be?

Perhaps it was too damaged to be thinking rationally...such an odd feeling, this sense of defeat.

The Elite Spybot backed up into the corner made where the door met the side wall and dropped down to its knees, bending down and collapsing itself into as compact a position as possible, then it began shutting down non-essential systems. Surely there was someone left who would have the means to find and repair it...

Its internal chronometer was one such system it had shut down so it had no way of knowing it was only three days afterward that the mighty steel door whirred to life as locking bars within the walls withdrew, and the door itself slowly swung open.

Ebenniah Zane stepped over the threshold and immediately noticed the crumpled Spybot. A fond smile crossed his features as he knelt beside the robot and gently removed a panel to give him access to the bot's inner parts. "Ah, look at you, my poor wonderful creation...they truly did a number on you, didn't they? No worries, my dearest - I can repair you. I am beyond ecstatic that you found your way home to me."

Zane tripped the robot's inner 'reset' switch and waited for it to restart, then helped the robot to its feet and half-carried it back into the other room.

It was still such a novel feeling to have a young and healthy body again but such a feeling paled in comparison to the overwhelming pride he felt when he paused to look up at the massive machine that had not only brought about his resurrection but had also been his only companion since he'd awakened.

"It saddens me that I cannot press a button and see you reborn, but worry not - I have the means to repair you, and then we can begin our plans to rebuild."

Zane tore his gaze from the machine and again began to carry the damaged robot further into the room, pausing only to close and secure the massive door behind him.

"I will need you now more than ever, my friend, there is a great deal of work to do. Tell me, what happened to your brothers?"

"Destroyed. The base was rigged to explode."

"I see...yet more losses to mourn and avenge, but all in due time. We must first rebuild and solidify my power again before we indulge our desire for vengeance."

There were several things he was thankful that he'd had the foresight to store down here, chief among them being a workbench with a full compliment of tools; he imagined those were initially brought down here in the name of body modification, as he had hazy memories of being obsessed with integrating machinery into his ailing form...while he had no intentions of embedding wire and metal into his body ever again, the tools and supplies would be suitable enough to at least get his wonderful Elite mostly functional again.

And oh, sanity...it was such a blessing to have it back, and coupled with his intellect and the return of one of his Elites, well...

Vengeance would be fun indeed.


End file.
